


Behavioural Modification

by bendingsignpost



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexual!Sherlock, First Time, M/M, Unreliable Narrator, extreme misunderstandings, past emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-07
Updated: 2012-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:07:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingsignpost/pseuds/bendingsignpost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever it took, he was going to make this work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Step One: Acclimatize Subject

“You do realize you’re prostituting yourself for tea, don’t you?” John asked him. “Technically.” Eyes shut, mouth slack, and his head lolling against the back of the couch, the doctor spoke at a murmur. 

“So you keep saying,” Sherlock answered, efficiently tossing the tissues into the bin. “Now go make the tea.”

For approximately ten seconds – closer to eight – John didn’t move. Then, with a sigh, he tucked himself back into his pants and zipped up his trousers. His shoulders hunched less this time but he still kept his eyes directed away from Sherlock when he stood and walked to the kitchen. Not quite the progress he had predicted, he would admit. Surely six sessions were enough for John to acclimatize. The man had adjusted to the general difficulties of living with Sherlock within a single week. His recalcitrance in this matter was frankly baffling. 

Was that how John thought of them, as sessions? He sprawled out as he wondered, soaking in the heat John’s back and thighs had deposited into the cushions. Sherlock thought of them as sessions simply because that was a default term. An “event” was too vague, an “appointment” required that he inform John of his intentions in advance, and none of the cruder terms were apt. Perhaps John thought of them as “exchanges”. That was the category his vocabulary most commonly suggested. 

He craned his neck, not quite able to see John in the kitchen. Surely the man didn’t need to be in there to watch water boil. Sherlock was still a bit miffed at the lack of cuddling, but he couldn’t quite find the correct opening for it. Moving into the warm space which had previously contained John was satisfying in its own way, of course. It had to be, or otherwise he would have stopped doing it by now. 

The problem with a space having previously contained John was that this necessarily meant John had vacated the space. Sherlock disliked this basic principle. Among John’s best qualities were his stability and warmth. His absence temporarily negated these qualities. 

He considered getting up and following John into the kitchen. 

He considered John’s potential responses. The most likely possibilities: being ignored, enduring awkward attempts at small talk, or, worst of the three, being told that now he was in the kitchen, he could make his own tea. Sherlock could always hold the sexual debt over John’s head, but that entailed its own risks. 

Relationships were complicated. Everyone knew that. There appeared to be a great debate within popular culture whether they were worth the effort, the general consensus coming up in the positive. Listening to John putter about, Sherlock privately agreed. For once.

He curled into the couch cushions, resisting the foreign urge to hug something. Perhaps the Union Jack pillow by his feet. In the absence of John, objects that had been near John took on new significance, at times functioning as vastly inferior substitutes. His reactions fascinated him. He resisted them to determine their pull. Some settled into aches, like unused muscles protesting their lack of exercise. They could inspire other physiological responses as well. 

He could, for instance, consider the act of kissing. The required proximity, resulting in varying levels of physical contact. Where to place his hands or direct his gaze. The matter of aim. The issue of stubble. Olfactory input. Taste. 

There: his body tightened. He experienced warmth in his abdomen, accompanied by a small chill through his upper body, particularly the shoulders. He could do this on command now. 

Sherlock realized he was also smiling. 

That reaction being far less controlled, he forced himself to stop. 

Then he realized he was playing with his own hand, left thumb stroking right palm. Unacceptable. He stopped that as well. He had been considering the pretence of washing his hands in the loo and experimentally licking his tissue-cleaned hand. The lapse of control made him think otherwise. 

His mobile beeped. 

His mobile was charging in the kitchen.

He was off the couch in a flash. In one of those moments of reduced barriers and privacy that couples were apparently prone to, John had already picked it up and checked the text. Sherlock read it over his shoulder, his cheek momentarily brushing John’s hair and ear. John’s back was warm against his front. Bliss. The final moment of it permitted before the case. 

“Oh, that’s _brilliant_ ,” he gushed. 

“That’s creepy as fuck,” John replied. “Who hides dead bodies inside mannequins?”

“No idea.” Reaching around the shorter man, he unplugged his mobile, mindful of the steeping cup on the counter. “Let’s find out.”

“I’m going to have nightmares.” Already going to his trainers.

“You already have nightmares,” Sherlock reminded him, calling over his shoulder as he bounded into his room to get dressed. “And there’s nothing remotely frightening about a body once it’s dead.”

“Could be infected with something. Disease, parasites, so on.” Somewhat muffled, even with the door left open. John was bent over, then, doing up his laces. 

“Once it’s been killed, then!” Fresh shirt, fresh trousers, his socks, where had his socks gone? Ready for him in his shoes. Wait, the nightmares. 

Coming into the sitting room, he threw on his coat, looped his scarf and deposited another scarf on one of John’s shoulders. Accepting it as his due, John wrapped the cloth about his neck and asked, “Does the tea count? Whether or not you drink it, I made it.”

“Plastic-coated corpses, John. Forget the tea.” There were more important things. Such as: “You’ve never had nightmares from the bodies before.” He was almost certain. Not bad ones, at least. Not nearly as bad as the ones from the war.

“No,” John acknowledged behind him on the stairs. “No, just- Never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” 

“What?” he persisted. John possessed enough coordination to lock the door and look at him at the same time. That he wasn’t doing so irked him.

“Cultural reference,” John explained. “It’s a thing.”

“A thing.”

“Yes. A thing.” John flapped his arm at a taxi that already had a passenger in it. 

Ah. “A thing where you’re afraid of storefront mannequins.”

“No,” John contradicted. Sherlock had heard the same sullen tone out of his own mouth. Completely irrational, the way the resemblance warmed him. Proof they were rubbing off on each other, discernible traces of their prolonged contact. He made sure to flag down the next cab with his left arm, using his raised limb to hide his ridiculous smile from John. 

“Then what?”

“It’s a cultural reference you wouldn’t get,” the doctor insisted as they climbed in.

“Harrods,” he instructed the cabbie. Then, to John: “If I won’t understand, it can’t embarrass you to tell me.” 

John’s mouth twisted. Not in disagreement. He was annoyed at the reasonable tone and therefore giving in. 

“Autons,” John said. 

“God, I hate those,” the cabbie chimed in. 

“ _Thank_ you!” John burst out, immediately welcoming an ally on the subject. Whatever it was. Something Harry had teased him about when they were children, no doubt, or still did. 

At any rate, by the time they arrived at Brompton Road, Sherlock had a rough grasp of the ridiculous subject of some sort of television programme. Once face-to-elbow with the remains in the department store basement, the matter took a momentary backseat. 

He didn’t delete the information entirely, however. Within two days, he used it to make Anderson scream outright, seemingly by accident and with only the aid of a plastic dummy. Once away from the officers, John looked at him, so immensely pleased, and began laughing. They were both laughing, leaning on the other for support. John wound down into chuckles more than once before setting himself off again. His head was ducked down, smile hidden. 

“Whew,” John said, breathing into Sherlock’s shoulder. He pulled back, his face flushed. In the dim light of the plastics factory hall, his eyes had already dilated. He looked and sounded as he did prior to orgasm. “Dizzy.”

“Not as dizzy as Anderson,” Sherlock murmured and, there it was, the stifled giggle. “Falling over like that at a crime scene....”

“Shut up,” John said, hand over his own mouth, eyes crinkling. “Stop it.”

“Never.”

John laughed on. 

Sherlock was reasonably certain that this was as true as love could get. 

 

 

He flung himself onto the couch with what was intended to pass for dramatic flair. Whether it did was immaterial. He’d taken out the last of Mycroft’s equipment prior to starting the sessions with John, and with Mrs. Hudson out, there wasn’t even anyone downstairs to hear the impact of his body on the cushions. 

Pity. 

Sherlock sighed. 

He texted John. 

_Worker took remains of industrial  
accident. Arranged as poorly hidden  
murder to frame employer. Bored.  
SH_

He put down his mobile, annoyed at the kitchen for sounding so empty. At the entire flat. 

He considered his options. 

Violin. 

Emails. 

Mrs. Hudson-proofing the laboratory half of the kitchen. 

Resisting the urge to go into John’s room. 

Clearly, none of those options held any merit whatsoever. John’s room, then. 

He went upstairs, stood in the doorway and attempted to understand. It wasn’t anything new, but the fascination had yet to wear off. John’s room was still largely devoid of anything beyond the essentials. Nearly everything was neat, down to the crisp corners of the tightly made bed. No fresh information to be gleaned there.

“Bored,” he told John’s bed. Seeing as Mrs. Hudson had yet to return his skull, again, he had very few options in the matter. Disliking the desk chair, he remained outside the doorway. Without John’s excessively meticulous bed-making skills, he couldn’t sit on that either without leaving evidence.

He resisted until he was bored of having so slight a challenge. Then he went inside and sat down on the floor. The dimensions of John’s bed were fundamentally the same as his in terms of height and width. Sherlock’s was longer by necessity. It was why he had claimed his bedroom. Not that he used it often enough to merit one. 

“Still bored,” he reminded the bed. 

The bed, if Sherlock had been prone to anthropomorphizing furniture, would likely have replied that it spent the vast majority of its time waiting for John to return to it. 

Sherlock would have responded that this sounded very boring. John was something that happened, like sunrise. Regular in its own way, the sun, and though it was helpful with illumination, any Londoner knew how to function under clouds or rain. 

Except that all sounded a bit too metaphorical for his tastes. 

He was revising his theoretical conversation when his mobile received a text. 

_That was faster than I’d expected.  
Thought we were investigating  
the maintenance staff before dinner._

Rolling his eyes, he typed out a quick reply. “Sometimes, he makes it too easy,” he told the bed. 

_10 AM is certainly before dinner.  
You went to your job, I to mine. SH_

Entirely unanthropomorphized, the bed continued to say nothing.

_I’m starting to like yours better, in  
all honesty. It’s all colds and paranoia  
over here. Nothing a cuppa and sleep  
couldn’t cure._

“Oh, that’s practically an invitation.”

_Speaking of tea. SH_

His chest felt strange. Adrenaline surging, increased heart rate, shallow breathing; all on cue. 

All on cue except for John. 

Twenty-three minutes later, the reply came.

_Between patients again. And, no, I  
haven’t forgotten. Try being patient  
for once._

A pun occurred to him. It was so horrible that he was actually unable to forget it. It could very well haunt him to the end of his days. Doctors shouldn’t talk about patients and patience in the same text. 

_Patience is another form of boredom.  
SH_

Almost immediately:

_Too bad._

“ _John_. Honestly.”

_That’s no help. SH_

_Too bad. :P_

He was smiling. 

He couldn’t seem to stop. 

“I feel ridiculous,” he told John’s bed. 

John’s bed didn’t care one way or the other. Obviously. 

He wondered when he would sleep on it. Copulate on it, if nothing else. John would probably insist on a bed for their first time and Sherlock couldn’t imagine they’d use his room. It would be such a waste. John had an undecorated wall in here. Sherlock twisted, right hand on the flooring behind him, mobile in his left. John would look good against that wall. The sight would be worth the effort, the neat doctor finally untucked. Trousers discarded on the floor. Shoes strewn. Jumper abandoned, one sleeve pulled inside out. The jumper under Sherlock’s knees, John considerate. 

They would cuddle, after. 

Sherlock really couldn’t stop smiling. It was alarming. 

_No longer bored. SH_

_Oh dear._

_I believe you’ll be pleased  
with the results. SH_

_Get the hell out of my room,  
Sherlock. I mean it. _

_No. SH_

_Prat._

John was smiling. Sherlock could tell. 

_Always. SH_

 

 

“I don’t know what it is,” John eventually concluded, “but you’ve done something to my bed.” As he worked slowly on his laptop, pecking his way through the last case, his speech turned as disjointed as his typing. “I’ve looked. You have.”

“Wrong.” He’d merely wanted to.

“You’re lying.”

“You’re paranoid.”

John looked at him, clearly wanting to sigh and clearly not wanting to give Sherlock the satisfaction. Too late: he had it anyway. Sherlock idly fiddled with the hem of his bathrobe.

The sound of typing died down in a few minutes. John stood, stretched. A much better sigh, that one. He went into the kitchen. Sherlock immediately rose and claimed John’s laptop for his own. 

“Stop editing that. I’m not done yet.”

“Clearly.”

“Sherlock.” Feigned irritation. Poorly feigned. 

When John returned, he had a mug in each hand. It hadn’t happened this way before. 

Sherlock smiled. 

“There you are,” John said, handing him the blue one. “I still don’t know what you think I do special to it.”

“Some people are gifted,” he answered dismissively. Inexplicable, but something he had so far been unable to disprove. He set the hot mug down on the table. 

John reached around him as he did, snapping his laptop shut. A flick of the hand to unplug it before hand and computer were both removed. “C’mon.”

John walked to the stairs and turned around. 

He looked at him expectantly. 

Sherlock stood and followed. 

Up the stairs, into the bedroom. There was a sense of unreality about it, as if this weren’t truly happening.

Why now? Some internal clock John possessed? Or an external factor? If Sherlock could determine that factor, if he could become that factor, his quality of life would increase nigh instantly. Even factoring in the current transitional period and its attached awkwardness, Sherlock’s sense of satisfaction with his life had skyrocketed. Managing John’s libido was even _fun_ , somehow. He experienced a remarkable lack of dread when considering it.

With uncharacteristic clumsiness, John set his laptop down on his desk with an uneven clatter, tea still in one hand, still too hot for drinking. By the time Sherlock returned downstairs, he expected his own to have gone stone cold. Acceptable loss. Perfectly acceptable. 

John leaned back against his desk, three steps away from his perfect spot against the wall. He pointed at his bed. “Well?” he asked. 

“Demanding, aren’t we?” Given the choice between trembling or being flippant, the banter would win out every time. The trembling remained beneath his skin, a shiver that took him behind his knees. Brain chemistry changing, his body altering itself in response to external stimuli. Kneel down, do it, be held. Task, reward. Simple. 

“Just prove you haven’t done anything bad to my bed.” Feigned irritation was now fond exasperation. Tea held defensively. A shield? A reminder. John was nervous.

Good John. Wonderful John. He wasn’t merely reacting to the game any longer. He was playing it, had devised his own endgame. 

Sherlock didn’t need to be told twice. 

He flopped backward onto the bed in his best sprawl. The mattress was wonderfully firm, the duvet fighting the disturbance to its set ways. He bounced, slightly, then again, slighter still. Turning his head, he said in the most arrogant tone he could muster, “Oh, yes, that was terrifying.”

John’s eyes were blue and steady. They studied the length of him once before keeping to Sherlock’s face. His control was excellent. Frankly, it was far better than Sherlock’s. He knew what his course of action would have been, had he been the one to first manoeuvre the other into his bed. Namely: pounce, pin. Tuck his face against John’s neck and refuse to be budged. Nonverbal claiming. John, however, seemed stuck on some bizarre stage of wary contemplation. Tedious. Stupid. 

Sherlock budged over. Patted the space of duvet next to him. 

John hesitated. 

More coaxing, then. “Why do you think I’ve done something to the bed?”

“Because you’ve done something to everything else in here. Counter-clockwise order means the bed is next.”

“Ah.” Reasonable. And true. He hadn’t been able to think of something worthy enough. “But you’re wrong. I know better than to disturb your sleeping environment.” Not when nudging him awake could result in a very impressive left hook to the temple. Only once, on a train. Once had been enough. 

John’s head bowed, steady gaze vanished. Clearly, a shared recollection. “You know,” he said, “the rest of my room is my sleeping environment, too.”

He shrugged, moving the duvet under his shoulders. “It’s perfectly safe to lie down.”

“Is that all it’s perfectly safe to do?” The innuendo was delivered simply, straightforward. It was aimed at him over the rim of a mug, followed by the movements of John’s throat and mouth. Swallow. A lick of the lips. 

“The safety of your bed hasn’t been compromised in any way,” he answered. He patted the space beside him a second time. 

John very nearly frowned. He set his mug down on his desk, still looking at the sprawling, barefoot man on his bed. 

He approached and sat. “Budge.”

“No.” He already had.

Rolling his eyes, John’s response was a quick hand on his shoulder and hip – and Sherlock found himself flipped over onto his stomach. He laughed into the pillow, bit it for symbolic value, and laughed again. It smelled _wonderful_.

John settled down next to him, close to touching, more than close enough to touch. Sitting, still upright. Not quite uneasy but certainly tentative. Attempting to conceal his own arousal. 

Sherlock rolled onto his side. “I really haven’t done anything.” He paused, waited, properly dramatic. “Yet.”

“If I put a lock on the door, that would only encourage you, wouldn’t it?” Shifting back now, leaning on his left hand. 

He hummed noncommittally, uncertain. What would the lock mean? Barrier, or challenge? _Keep out_ , or _Come get me?_

“It would,” John decided. 

Not a challenge. Rather: “That’s practically an invitation.”

“Only to you.”

Sherlock grinned.

“God, that’s terrifying,” John said. Twisted at the waist, right foot still on the floor. Left leg on the bed, bent at the knee. Leaning slightly closer now, roughly sixty degree angle. Too far away. 

“You know you enjoy it,” he replied. “Speaking of which.”

John Watson had a way of going still when a hand was placed over his crotch. His features went into a somewhat slack expression, then froze that way. He sucked in his breath and his stomach by extension. Gathering heated blood, his fly bulged upward beneath Sherlock’s hand, his fingers. Such a quick process. 

Sherlock began. 

John’s breath shuddered out. Eyes closed. Mouth open, certainly enough to lick into with ease. Still too far away. He made a noise, a variety of whine that would turn into a whimper, given time. His hips rolled, body shifting, twisting. 

Awkward with only his left hand, Sherlock sat up, guided John down. Less than graceful, his torso bounced. Sherlock unfastened his trousers. Dark blue pants today, tenting, darker patch at the top. Very quick. Flattering. Evidence that John needed him in return would never go unappreciated.

“Oh, _fuck_.” Muffled, John’s arm over his face, voice stolen away by a jumper sleeve. 

“A bit more than what I was intending, but if you insist....” It wasn’t remotely likely that he would achieve enough of an erection to penetrate, but John certainly seemed up for the reverse.

“No,” John gasped. “This- I, oh.”

“Lick my hand.”

John did. Tongue pressing, breath hot. Saliva across fingers and palm, now applied to other flesh. 

Eyes squeezed shut, John bit his own hand, teeth beneath his thumb. Beautiful, strained. Impossible to kiss. Time became subjective. 

John came. 

God, that noise. Christmas, Christmas every day, whenever he wanted, that noise. 

With no tissues in sight and John already paranoid of bed mistreatment, Sherlock licked his hands clean. He didn’t like the taste, but he had been curious about it. Eyes hidden beneath his forearm, John didn’t watch, merely groaned at the sound. Overstimulation. His breathing slowed. He closed his mouth, possibly preparing to fall asleep. Still no kisses, then? No matter. Having seen the way the man approached women, he hadn’t expected John to be shy. That it was unexpected made it better. Frustrating, but endearing. Or he was aware of the lengths Sherlock would go to for that reward. In which case, it was simply frustrating, but Sherlock would certainly respect him for it. 

A small twitch when Sherlock tucked him away. Not enough to dislodge his arm from over his eyes. Sherlock understood; he’d been told more than once that his gaze was far too penetrative for comfortable intimacy. Beyond that momentary responsiveness, John remained stationary, limp. Unguarded, vulnerable on his back. One foot still on the floor. A trail of hair lead up from his crotch to his navel, such an insignificant covering over skin, muscle and intestines. Sherlock put him back together with care. 

Prolactin in the blood, serotonin and endorphin surging as adrenaline faded. Oxytocin and phenethylamine continued their introduction. Effects like morphine, neuroimaging displaying the resemblance to cocaine. He wanted to see a scan of John’s brain, see where it lit up when he was touched, when Sherlock touched him, when John thought about Sherlock. He wanted to see a scan of each of them, overlaid. If they matched. 

He wanted to see John’s eyes. 

Muscles relaxed, John’s arm was a warm weight. Sherlock studied the bite marks on his hand, touching, looking until John decided to look back. He would adjust someday. Sherlock was in no hurry. Stretch it out, make it last. Keep the boredom at bay. The wonders of addiction. John was a high that Lestrade couldn’t confiscate. 

It was sensitive to teeth, that part of the hand John had bitten. The marks were a relatively smooth crescent on the back of the hand, dots on the palm from his lower incisors. Before, he had bitten his finger. Escalation? Desire for pain or muffling of sound. Oral fixation a certainty; Sherlock saw the way he licked his lips, couldn’t help but see. 

John flexed his fingers against Sherlock’s. 

His eyes were open. 

Sherlock’s wanted to close. His body wanted to stop this sitting up nonsense and lie down on top of the man spread out beneath him. Sleep was boring, but sleep _on top of John_.... It had possibilities. Positions, ramifications. Their personal spaces merging. Kissing him awake. Yes. 

“I should, um,” John said. Tension returned to his hand, indecision pushing at lethargy. “Do you want me to...?”

Stupidity had never been more endearing. Being responsible for the chemical basis behind it played a part. A large part. 

“You already made tea,” Sherlock reminded him. He took that he did so as proof that he was willing to be supportive in this relationship. He was sure John would realize that when his brain chemistry returned to its admittedly altered status quo. 

John blinked up at him slowly. His eyes flickered between Sherlock’s face and their hands, then the mug on his desk. “Oh.” He pulled his hand free, thumbed at the imprints of his teeth. They did hurt, then, the pain blocked at the time. “Right.” His tongue played at his lower lip.

“Then you forced me into your bed,” Sherlock continued. 

John’s tongue froze in its half-out position. Enough to see, not enough to do anything about. A tease, unintentional but a tease nonetheless. His eyes were wide.

“Which is _safe_ ,” he added. 

The expression of alarm didn’t fade. 

Sherlock bounced a little, the vibrations moving John as well. “See?”

His smile was faint, eyes still troubled. He pushed himself up, elbows planted on the duvet.

“If you need me to prove it, I’ll sleep here tonight.”

John blinked, then laughed. The sound was more surprise than joy. “No,” John declined. The accompanying smile didn’t dull the rejection. “I trust you,” he elaborated, and that was the closest either of them had come to saying it. Not a rejection, then. Simply denying the necessity. A correction. 

Sherlock smiled back. 

“Your tea,” John said. “Probably getting cold.”

“I’m aware,” Sherlock replied. He took the cue anyway. If there was one thing he had learned from that wonderfully maddening year with Victor Trevor, it was that his partner would feel the urge to reciprocate as a necessity. It was a small outlet Sherlock had provided John with, but it had proved an effective one so far. John had displayed no signs of guilt and Sherlock had only needed to push John’s hand away once. What John hadn’t understood, he had wordlessly accepted. For that, Sherlock was grateful. Neither did it hurt that keeping John in a sexual debt made him feel more secure.

He left the bed by climbing over John, momentarily straddling him. Propped up on his elbows, John had little use of his hands. The illusion of defencelessness increased. An abandoned pistol, waiting to be picked up. Craving purpose, calling out for a hand to reload it. To take it apart, clean away the grit and reassemble it. To wield it. 

Resisting the urge to remain on top of his flatmate, he climbed off too quickly for his liking. If he looked back, looked down at John on his mussed bed, post-orgasmic and loose and caring, there would be an issue. There would be an emotional display, and no one wanted that. Sherlock went downstairs and drank his tea instead. 

It was good to be in love.


	2. Step Two: Reward Behaviour

“Sherlock!” Excited tone, feet pounding on the stairs: good news.

“John!” he responded, not getting up.

Cheeks flushed, grin spread wide, John bounded into the front room. On second thought, perhaps this was worth sitting up for. “We’re in the newspaper!”

“Oh.” Never mind then. He flopped back down. 

“Sherlock, we’re in the _paper_.” He shook said item in his hand for emphasis.

“I heard you the first time.” Nevertheless, he moved his feet onto the floor, giving John a clear space to sit on the couch. “The _Evening Standard_ is nothing to get excited about.” From John’s tube ride home from the pub, doubtlessly. He’d been doing that more often of late, going to the pub. Multiple pubs, trying all within walking distance before moving farther out. Sherlock had almost worried about that before remembering that having separate social lives was part of being settled into a relationship. Besides, John widening his knowledge of London was a worthwhile pursuit. 

“Look, there’s a picture!” Sitting, John opened it to page five and angled it toward him.

“ _What_.”

He sat up, snatching the paper from John’s hands. John leaned over his shoulder, breath smelling faintly of Carlsberg. It only worsened his mood. Sherlock hated beer, hated it particularly for making John’s mouth temporarily repulsive. He looked at the picture. It was horrible. 

“This is horrible,” he said. 

“I think it’s great,” John said, arm against his, head tilted. 

“John, my picture is in the evening newspaper. It’s being spread throughout the Underground as we speak.” When had this been taken? He remembered the street, remembered speaking to Lestrade on that street. It was the reporter he didn’t remember. Had he not seen? Not cared? Deleted it? “The last thing I want is my face across all of London.” It would likely be in the _Metro_ as well come morning.

After a small moment of consideration, John hummed. “Hard to pretend to be someone else when they’ve a photo of you, true. Still, I’m sure you’ll manage.”

“That’s-” That wasn’t it. A practical consideration, but that wasn’t it. “It’s annoying,” Sherlock settled for. 

On the page, Lestrade listened as Sherlock gestured, speaking, John standing between them, eyes on his flatmate. Mid-explanation, Sherlock looked stupid with his mouth open, looked strange and preposterous with his cheekbones, even worse with the wind taking his hair that way. He hated looking stupid. Detested it. He wasn’t an idiot. 

John laughed. “Yes, I’m sure having all of London fancying you will be hard to take.”

Sherlock wasn’t sure how to respond to that joke. He flopped his body back down on the couch, swinging his legs up across John’s lap. “Is the article any good, at least?” He doubted it. 

John set the paper over his legs. “I haven’t read it all yet. If you’re asking about the ‘preservation of deductive reasoning,’ then it’s bad.” 

He grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. Trying to enjoy the sight of pride and exuberance across that face, he watched John read. It improved his mood, slightly. 

When John frowned, that mood collapsed. 

“What?”

“‘Assistant’,” John read. 

“Oh?”

“‘The consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant.’ I’m not even named! And I’m not-” He pointed at Sherlock as if his index finger were a piece of effective rhetoric. “I am not your assistant.”

“You assist. It’s applicable.”

“Being applicable doesn’t- I’m your colleague. Colleague, Sherlock, not assistant. I don’t care how many things I hand you. You’re not the Doctor, I’m not an assistant.”

“No,” he confirmed, admittedly a bit lost in John’s outburst. “You’re the doctor. I think that’s fairly well established by this point.”

“No, I-” He stopped. Inclined his head. “We went over this last week.” After receiving nothing more than a blank look, John shook his head. “Never mind.”

“You want recognition,” Sherlock summarized. “Not accolades, but acknowledgement of your role and participation in the case. You feel belittled, if not detached, on the reasoning that what is invaluable will be mentioned.”

John looked at him without turning his head, nose pointed to the paper, eyes aimed at the owner of the shins over his thighs. 

“People are idiots,” Sherlock concluded. 

“‘Invaluable’,” John repeated. 

“Yes, John, I heard myself the first time.” Then, in a desperate attempt to avoid any further embarrassment, he turned his face against the couch cushion and pretended to be unconscious. Normally, he would have left outright, but he couldn’t.

John’s hand was warm on his knee. 

The longer Sherlock was still, the more circles John’s thumb made into his trousers. 

The only thing for it was to keep John trapped on the couch with him. Beyond using his legs to accomplish this, he had very little by way of a plan. 

John, the wonder that he was, stayed anyway. 

 

 

Sherlock finally got him standing up. On his feet, against the wall, trousers sliding down his thighs, John was a gasping mess. He looked sublime. He sounded even better. Scent and taste more fascinating than extraordinary, but that was no reason to remove his mouth from John’s neck. 

John pawed at him in return, left hand eventually joining Sherlock’s active right. His right hand buried in Sherlock’s hair, firm, secure. Not painful. Holding him in place. His breath beside Sherlock’s ear: hot, shallow. Full of half-formed words, sounds like “harder” and “fuck” and “yes” and maybe, possibly, a name. Finally trusting himself – trusting Sherlock? – enough to speak. 

There was a spot on the side of John’s neck, roughly a centimetre below his hairline, which made his hips buck. It was no sooner discovered than thoroughly tested. 

“Oh god.” High, strained. Needing to be pinned, held up against the surface behind him. “Fuck.” Harder. “Sherlock.” Voice half-broken. Pulse accelerating further under his hand. _Yes_. “Wanna fuck. Fucking inside you, god, want that. Fuck you so good.”

“Of course,” he answered. His voice was as steady as the rhythm of his hand. What other answer was there? John wouldn’t hurt him. John had already proven he wouldn’t throw a fit at Sherlock’s lack of physical arousal. Soon, their next session, he would collapse, spent, inside and around Sherlock, more blanket than man. He would fall asleep and Sherlock could stare and prod at him as long as he wanted, free of repercussions. The idea of disturbing John, of waking him up and John only _smiling_.... He could hardly count on that, but it was a lovely fantasy. “I’d wondered when you would ask.”

John’s rhythm faltered. 

Sherlock nipped that spot, worried it with his teeth, and John’s rhythm collapsed entirely into trembling thrusts. John’s hand around his was tight, tense. His semen, if left, would stick their fingers together. His other hand was fisted in Sherlock’s shirt. His eyes, uncovered, unfocused, were directed toward the ceiling. He breathed through his mouth. 

“Did you...” he began slowly. “Did you just say-”

“Yes,” Sherlock interrupted, and kissed him. 

John tensed, back straight against the wall. 

Sherlock pulled back. 

“No,” John said. His eyes stayed on Sherlock’s but he angled his face away. Wary. Protecting his mouth. He separated their hands. Grimaced at his own mess. 

“What?” Sherlock asked. 

“This is too much,” John said. “Congratulations: you have found my limit.”

“I’ll be sure to avoid it in the future.” As soon as he determined what exactly it had been. Was Sherlock not allowed to talk during? Was that it?

“No.” John pushed at him with his clean right hand. Not a shove, a sustained push. Distance, not violence. Breathing space. He pulled up his pants. Sherlock wanted to keep his hand up John’s jumper. Just because monitoring the man’s heartbeat couldn’t resolve everything didn’t mean it wasn’t comforting. “No more.”

“You don’t want to anymore?” Which was it, then, honesty or false promise in the heat of the moment? “What happened to wanting to fuck me?”

“Sherlock!” Anger, strong. Now what? 

He had tissues in his pocket. Left-handed, he removed them. He used them. He handed them to John. John did the same, then chucked them to the floor, very hard. The crumpled tissue fell softly all the same. He bent, hauled up his trousers, and fastened them. His face was extremely red.

If Sherlock waited, the anger would stop. Or it would harden and settle. Similar to the aches Sherlock had from not holding him. He thought of anger where those aches were. Unacceptable. 

“John,” he said, calm and attempting to calm, “if you tell me your objections, I will honour them.” He felt an echo in his voice. No, felt his voice was an echo. Where were those words from? Ah. University. Victor Trevor. Victor shoved onto the floor, biting down anger and holding his hands up in offering. Considerate, incompatible Victor. They’d made themselves fit together anyway. There was no reason he couldn’t do the same with John.

Sherlock was willing to compromise. To consider it, at least. Depending. Where necessary. John’s libido was necessary. As it would also stimulate pair-bonding, Sherlock had no true grounds for complaint. 

“My ‘objections’?” John repeated. “My _objections_ are that you can’t do this. I’m tired of it!”

“You weren’t a minute ago.” It wasn’t an accusation. It was a calm reminder. The important thing was to remain calm. Sherlock’s inability had never bothered him before. “Why have you changed your mind?” John would tell him. Sherlock would fix it. They would resume.

“Why the fuck did I agree to this? That’s the real question. No,” he interrupted before Sherlock could start. “Don’t. I remember. Be quiet and just- Don’t.”

What else had Victor said? Some of it had even been useful. “Would you like some time alone?” There. That was one. 

“No!” John shouted. Checked himself. “Yes!” 

“Would you like me to leave the flat?”

John rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Stop. Stop it.”

“Stop what?” It was difficult to think. Remaining calm took effort. Took blocking out the way John wanted distance between their bodies.

“Being reasonable. You are _never_ reasonable, Sherlock, so why the hell are you starting now?”

“The situation seemed to call for it.” Don’t reach for him. Don’t reach. Don’t- It hurt not to reach. 

All the tension in John’s body could be felt through his sleeve. Violin strings, tuned too high a pitch, ready to snap and hit him in the fingers or face. Adjust with caution, but adjust. 

“We can alter the terms,” he said. 

John didn’t pull his arm away. “I want out,” he said. 

A razor, a quick slash down the arm. Hearing the tearing cloth, seeing the welling blood. Feeling nothing. No sting, no burn. Until later. 

“We can alter the terms,” Sherlock repeated. 

“Yes,” John said. “I want out. Those are my terms.”

Technically, that was only one term. “Unacceptable.”

“Too bad.” Shifting now, elbow remaining in Sherlock’s hand. Feet pointed toward him rather than away. 

What to do, what angle, what tactic? Sexual bribery wouldn’t work here; he’d just done that. Emotional, what emotional difficulty could Sherlock resolve? 

“You’re feeling underappreciated,” he said.

“‘Underappreciated’?” Did he have to keep parroting? It was so unnecessary. “What was your first clue?”

Three weeks ago. The look on John’s face after taking the tube home. The way he said _you forgot me again_ as if he were resigned to it. As if Sherlock were expected to have adjusted to having someone forever with him. That John assumed his place was at Sherlock’s side and, moreover, believed that Sherlock knew this. 

“I sent a correction to the _Evening Standard_ ,” he said instead. 

Blink into a partial squint, head tilted in unconscious mimicry of deafness. “What?” 

“I revised the offending paragraph,” he continued rather than repeat himself. “There will be a correction in this afternoon’s paper.”

For the first time, John appeared calm rather than simmering. “You sent an angry letter,” he said. The words were experimental. John often had to speak to adapt to ideas. 

“Hardly. I sent a snide and condescending email.”

Turning his head away, John bit his lip. The corners twitched up anyway. “How snide and condescending?”

“Oh, extremely.” Tone and emphasis calculated. John would typically laugh.

He tucked his chin down instead, making a bid to hide his smile. His arm was relaxed in Sherlock’s hand. Good enough, if not fully satisfactory. “Can I read it?”

“If you like.” He dropped his hand with a lingering touch. A caress to the jumper, not the arm beneath. Less intrusive to John’s fragile mood. “I’ll forward it to you.”

“You know I’m not mad about the paper,” John said. 

“I know. But it undid my efforts.” Which he was still annoyed about. 

“Your-” He stopped in the midst of echoing. More than smile, he laughed. He giggled. He returned his back to the wall, possibly approaching hysterics. 

“John?” Would it be bad to touch him? The physical impulse to smooth his hands over John’s arms and cradle him close, was that correct? He had too many urges to keep track of which ones were socially acceptable. 

His body shaking itself free of tension, John sighed, then burst into giggles once more from merely looking at Sherlock. “You’re insane. You are, you are absolutely mad.” The giggles dissipated as he spoke, eyes soft. “You do realize that there are simpler ways of acknowledging someone than a handjob every other day. Saying ‘thanks’ every so often, that sort of thing.”

“Manners are boring.”

“And handjobs aren’t, right.” He laughed again. 

Actually, they were. In and of itself, there was nothing terribly thrilling about having his hand on John’s penis. John’s reaction to the situation, however, was another matter entirely. It was bizarre, being eager to perform sexual acts on a person. But until John began taking the initiative, Sherlock would have to continue if he wanted to be able to touch John at all. Besides: “You were becoming sexually frustrated.”

A grin, a playful one. They were in the clear. “Natural condition of a bloke, isn’t it?” Rhetorical as well as inaccurate. No need for a direct response. “So, two birds with one stone, then? All of....” John gestured vaguely. 

“Essentially.”

“It’s all right,” John said. “I get it now – you don’t need to keep doing it. At the risk of actually talking about feelings, that you would try is enough.”

He hadn’t realized he would like trying. That hadn’t been the way of it last time. “Are you sure?” He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t know how else to get to the cuddling. This was simple. Turn John into a loose-limbed heap. Migrate to doing so on a bed. Position self under loose-limbed heap. Success.

John would nuzzle in his sleep, he was sure of it. Sherlock would never need to come out and ask for it. He could maintain a reasonable bargaining position. Make them short naps, no REM cycle, and there wouldn’t even be nightmares. 

“I’m sure,” John said. Slight hesitation. “It’s fine.”

John was resolved to give up the physical gratification. John disliked the idea of it, but his self-sacrificing tendencies promised moral gratification, which John believed he preferred. The moral gratification was Sherlock’s way in. Altering the scenario around a moral compass was comparable to changing the direction of that compass. John’s misplaced sense of chivalry needn’t remain a barrier. It was a matter of time and demonstration.

“All right,” Sherlock said. 

“So we’re good?” John asked. “Back to normal.” He paused. “Our version of it, anyway.”

“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed. No more of this “wanting out” business. The pain of that thought, the knowledge of the near miss, provided an unanticipated degree of distress. The conflict had passed. Why was he upset? He still had John, if less of him than before. Ah. That was it. The feeling properly understood, he pushed it down. He would win him back in full, given time. Unlike Victor, John wouldn’t graduate and leave. John could be his for life. “I’ll forward you that email,” he said.

“Great.”

Now there was a smile worth waiting for. 

 

 

John’s mood improved considerably. It took another case for his body language to quiet when he was next to Sherlock, but one was fortunately forthcoming. Just in time, too. He’d been going out of his mind with boredom once his John-access had been revoked. 

Not that the insurance swindle was turning out to be particularly interesting. The only true benefit to the case had been John exhibiting his regained confidence. “My colleague,” Sherlock had been sure to say. Even, once, “My partner, Dr. John Watson.” Slipping it in, trying it out, and John _smiling_. 

“Okay, I get it,” John murmured in a hall of the claims building, occupying the space between a pair of copy machines. “You don’t have to try so hard.” 

Yes he did. If it meant John looking at him like that, of course he did. “Try what?” he asked, handing John the next sheet to scan. 

“I don’t think the paper will make that mistake again.”

“It certainly won’t,” he agreed with confidence. 

John bit his lip, poorly holding in a snicker. His amusement over the email had yet to fade. 

They were almost done with the not-insignificant pile by the time Sherlock decided the question was worth asking. Or sidling up to, as the case was. “This isn’t what usually happens.”

“Hm? Printer clogged again?”

He rolled his eyes. “No.” Not this time, at least. “No, I meant.” He could do this. “This name in the paper thing.”

John mouthed but, mercifully, didn’t repeat aloud, “Name in the paper thing.” His eyebrows had drawn together. Sherlock wanted to put his finger on the crease, feel the change. He worked the scanner, hands moving without the guidance of his eyes. Up, remove, insert, down, button. Hum, print. Repeat.

“It’s unusual for anyone to want to be associated with me in the public eye,” he clarified. They might as well have been walking around hand in hand.

Up, remove, insert, down. Button. Hum, print. No repeat. John, considering him, tongue between his lips. The silence of the inactive copier was disproportionate to its previous noise. 

John pulled a face in clear imitation. “Normal’s boring.”

All the details of the hall – the worn carpet, the dropped blue biro with chewed cap, the missing two leaves on the artificial shrub – were eliminated. Everything was John. Every minuscule line and feature: John. All else shut off. And in the moment before Sherlock noticed there was nothing else, _he didn’t even mind_.

Somehow, he recovered. The biro returned. The heat and hum of the copiers. The off-centre print of the papers in the rubbish bin. “That was awful.” Referring to the imitation, of course. 

“I thought it was pretty good, actually.” 

“Utter rubbish.”

John laughed and resumed copying the files. “Suit yourself.” Up, remove, insert, down, button. Hum. Print. “Besides, everyone likes being in the paper. Maybe this way, people will know who to hold at arrow-point in the future.” Up, remove, insert, down, button. “So, any theories yet?” 

“Of course not.”

“What, really?”

“It’s never a good idea to theorize before possessing the facts, John. One inevitably begins twisting facts to suit the theory rather than theory to suit the facts.”

John considered this. Slowly, of course, but there was a certain pleasure in watching him. The play of his features, the give-and-take of eye contact. “You need at least a little theory. Otherwise, how do you know what direction to follow?”

“Adaptive theory, John. That involves being able to change direction when it’s shown to be the wrong one.”

He nodded. “All right, then. Makes sense. Hold on.” He reached inside his jacket for a small notebook. He patted the pocket. “Have you got a pen?”

“There’s one on the floor. Functional, I assume, only chewed on.”

John made a face but fetched the blue biro anyway. He scribbled in the notebook, then dropped the pen into the rubbish. It slid down the papers and tapped the metal side of the bin as he returned the notebook into his jacket. 

“The things you put on your blog.”

“Oh, I’ve got a whole list of the pretentious things you say,” John told him with relish. 

“What’s the best one?”

“I don’t know,” John said, and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “You haven’t finished talking yet.”

Sherlock shot him a look. He tried to hold it. He did. 

He gave in and smiled. “You’re going to need a bigger notebook.”

“And a few more pens,” John agreed. 

Sherlock could do that. “Noted.” He gathered up their copies. “Ready for stage two?”

“I could use a spot of light reading,” he answered with a sigh. “But I could use dinner before that. Meet you at home?” 

“Of course. Bring back spring rolls.”

“I didn’t-” The pause as John remembered who he was talking to. “Sure. Are you actually going to eat them?”

“Depending on how long this takes, possibly. Out of boredom, if nothing else.” He saw the waver as John weighed cost and waste. “Use my card.”

“Have I still got it?”

“No.” He’d pickpocketed it back. “Right back pocket.”

John’s tongue was stuck between his lips again. His eyes flickered down Sherlock’s body and returned, dark, to his face. “Your coat’s in the way.” Token protest only. 

“Arms full of paper, John. Arms full of surprisingly heavy paper that I’m not making you carry.”

A chuckle there. John drawing closer, chest nudging the papers. His arm lifting heavy fabric, sliding against his shirt. Hand dipping down in a polite skim over his back. Fingers encountering billfold, exerting pressure. The intimacy of the position clearly wasn’t lost on John. 

Sherlock sustained eye contact. 

John did not. He pulled Sherlock’s card from his billfold before pocketing the plastic and placing the holder into Sherlock’s coat.

Clearly, Sherlock was being needier than John was comfortable with. 

He smiled tightly and walked out in the lead. 

 

 

John returned to 221b with two boxes of takeaway and a spring in his step. 

“Five incidents so far,” Sherlock informed him upon his entry. “Not sure yet how they’re related. One claim might even be truthful – check into that one.” He thrust a handful of papers toward him.

“Right,” John said, effectively bounding forward to take them. His smile didn’t waver in the slightest. 

“Something interesting happen at dinner?”

“Hm? Oh. No,” John answered, skimming the sheet. “Just thinking.” Takeaway on the table, he leaned onto the surface, right hand warming the wood.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” A smile. Wide and content. “It’s been a good day. One of those days when everything pulls together. And I mean, everything. My job, my... investigative hobby.” John picked those words with care. Almost with as much care as he added, “My, my love life.”

He’d said it. He’d actually said it. 

What was Sherlock supposed to do? He had no idea what to do.

“Mm.” Eyes on the spread across the table to keep his gaze from unnerving John. “You were saying about the investigative hobby?”

“Okay, okay. Getting to it.” There was no heat in the protest. Only warmth. That smile. Like stepping into daylight. 

Maybe it was worth revolving around the sun after all.


	3. Step Three: Escalate Procedure

 

John was an honest, loyal man.

Oh, he was certainly capable of lying. He was even capable of lying well at times. As Sherlock knew what he looked like when he was doing it, deceit would be ineffectual in the extreme, but the point remained that John could lie.

John was also, he assumed, capable of betrayal. Any man in possession of a strong moral principle was. Doubtlessly Harry had considered herself betrayed by her brother in the past. An alcoholic sister after an alcoholic father? Oh, John would have surely done something. He was just as certain that while John would feel differently on the subject, the doctor would also admit to understanding his sister’s objections.

Therefore: John was an honest, loyal man who was capable of untruths and abandonment. He also possessed a sense of morality. A strong enough sense for Sherlock to depend upon, and that was rare. It was reasonable to assume that if John didn’t feel guilty, he hadn’t done anything he considered to be wrong.

This was the unfortunately tricky area. John had, after all, shot a cabbie with neither hesitation nor remorse. Generally speaking, that was a bit not good.

Generally speaking, cheating on one’s boyfriend was also a bit not good. Oh, certainly not to the same extent as killing a man, the general populace would try to insist, but John would think otherwise, depending on the dead man in question.

John had killed for him.

John wouldn’t cheat on him.

What, then, could John possibly be doing on a date with someone else? It made no sense.

The scenario: John, a woman, a restaurant. The woman was a fresh acquaintance and a Londoner rather than a commuter. The restaurant was of a respectable price range, judging by the jumper John had changed into. The hour and arrangement said date.

Except it couldn’t be.

John had left the flat in high spirits. He had made no attempt to hide his actions. He had gone so far as to make Sherlock a cup of tea before leaving. He had been deliberately open – a show of trust, well done, John, the progress was appreciated – as well as caring.

A date-like scenario, then, but with some other sort of prospect. With someone he had just met, the options were typically romance, sex, entertainment or information. Sherlock had claim to the first two and they had a telly for the third. Information, then. But what?

He needed more data.

Until John returned, he wouldn’t get any.

He played his violin rather than think, played until his arms ached more than his mind did. Regardless of the building burn beneath his skin, he kept at it, slashing at air and stabbing at sound. Improvisation took over, frustration in disjointed arpeggios and discordant key changes, anxiety in _tremolo_. He flipped the bow upside-down and played _col legno_ , the sound as wispy and thin as the hairs on John’s stomach. Ire brought the hair back to the strings when he could no longer stand the resemblance; _marcato_ persistence drove it into them. His fingers shifted, stretched, covered a fumble with a trill, and gave themselves over for the need of solid, harassed notes. Eyes shut, he surrendered himself to it, bending, twisting. He nearly stepped into the coffee table and hardly cared.

Flying _spiccato_ gradually cooled into _détaché_ strokes, harsh bounces of hair on string giving way to the melodrama of a smooth yet pausing stroke. Gliding _legato_ took over entirely. He slurred his way through minor keys, properly wallowing. His hand was a creature of _vibrato_ , shaking the music until the music shook it back. Violin pinned to his shoulder with his chin, he snapped his hand off the wooden neck and cracked his tiring fingers against his thigh, bow agitated into a return to open string chords.

He played, and he played, and by the time he realized John was listening from the doorway, he might as well have knelt down at the man’s feet and spoken his heart aloud.

Whirling away to face the window, he tore the bow from the strings and jerked the violin from his shoulder. The frog was tight in his right hand, the strings clenched into silence by his left. The muscles of his arms trembled. His back ached. He could feel the blood inside his fingers as it drew near the callused tips.

“John.”

His voice was hoarse. There was no reason for it.

Behind him, the doctor shifted his weight. Leaning against the doorframe before, standing unsupported now. No, one hand still on the frame. A light touch. Fingertips. Jacket open, eyes wide.

“God, Sherlock.”

John was breathless. There was no reason for that either.

The trembling in his arms spread to the rest of his body. He set his bow down while he was still capable of doing so gently. He bent to retrieve his rosin cloth from the case on the floor. Eyes open, back turned, he cleaned the strings and body.

“Are you putting it away?”

Sherlock turned.

John lowered his hand from the doorframe. He had been to an Italian restaurant. He had used the toilet there even though he hadn’t needed to, either because the table had been too small or the company too dull. He had not had dessert. Dull company, then. Not a date after all. Good, loyal John. He’d be hurt to know Sherlock had doubted him.

Sherlock said nothing and John said, “I’ve never heard you play like that. You don’t play like that when I’m here.”

“No,” Sherlock agreed. He didn’t. He didn’t feel like that when John was home. Or, more accurately, he didn’t feel that way about John when John was home.

“Oh, good,” John said, which made no sense. He hesitated, hand rising back to the doorframe. Entry, exit, on the edge of both. Left hand. Steady hand. “Do you mind if I listen? In here.”

Oh. He had misunderstood. Sherlock was stopping, he had already stopped playing.

He picked up his bow all the same. “What would you like?”

“What was that? That one you just played.”

“ _Do ut Des_ ,” he picked at random. He’d never been able to fully delete all the Latin cluttering up his head. There were few things as appropriate as sacrifice and reciprocation.

“It was amazing.” Praise delivered as a statement of fact.

Sherlock shrugged.

“Is there another?” John asked.

“There can be.” He began to rosin his bow.

Four even steps brought John to his chair. He sat and gave his eyes over to Sherlock’s face. He added a smile. “What’s this one called, then?”

“ _Do ut Facias_.”

“A series.”

“A progression.” He rosined slowly, giving John every opportunity to change his mind. He folded the rosin away into its cloth. He tuned the strings once more.

John waited for him, quiet, hands upon his thighs. His tongue peeked between his lips.

The bow kissed the strings. Hair and metal made love.

He dared the optimism of a major key and allowed his heartbeat to conduct. The tempo escalated.

Eyes closed from sight, ears full of sound, he knew when John shifted. When he leaned forward or settled back. He knew John. He knew John was his.

When he lowered the bow, John knew it too.

“That was....”

Staring up at him, John seemed to have forgotten how to speak. His blue eyes had darkened into a hazel illusion. His chest rose and fell, trapped by Sherlock’s dictation of rhythm. He was motionless, lost, and made no effort to hide his need.

Sherlock knelt at his case. Set down his violin. He loosened his bow. Tucked both away.

He lifted his eyes to John’s knees before he dared his face.

Their fear was identical. Of and for each other. It was in John’s eyes, his mouth, the small muscles beneath the skin of his cheeks.

The faded denim, soft under his palm, was warm from John’s knee, his thigh. Sherlock’s thumb studied the seam, stroked the threads in the cloth. John’s hands were trembling fists. Both of Sherlock’s palms on those knees now, his shins against the floor. Pressure, the slightest pressure, and John dropped his head back. Shallow breathing, flushed cheeks. Tension indicated pain. Constricted erection. Sherlock traced his fingertips up John’s thighs. John fumbled at the openings of his trousers. Small, rapid nods of the head, eyes tight shut. Desperation. A junkie afraid of the needle.

With the utmost care, Sherlock’s hands crossed his thighs, hips. He cupped John, fingers caught between man and seat. He pulled John closer, bent his head. Breathless, John cursed, a sigh of profanity. Legs spread, Sherlock between, as much as pants and trousers would permit. Sherlock tugged at the cloth and John lifted himself, hands gripping the armrests as if to break themselves.

He nosed at the hairs on John’s legs as he removed the man’s shoes. He studied skin with the flat of his tongue and rid him of his clothing as well.

Hand in his mouth, John made a broken sound.

Afraid.

Good. John thrived on fear.

The hem of the tan jumper had fallen across John’s lap. Sherlock lifted it, the back of his hand deliberate against John’s skin. He understood how to tease. He was no stranger to the demand for a sexual partner who was sexually interested. He was more than willing to provide that illusion. He licked his lips and bent his head and John choked on his name.

A decade away from regular practice, he attempted nothing too adventurous. Lick the shaft, suck the head, tongue the glans. Forearm across the stomach, hold him down.

It was more tiring than he’d remembered but also less undignified. He reached for John’s hand when he became tired of John muffling himself. John’s hand wasn’t shaking now. It was steady and it squeezed Sherlock’s tightly enough to hurt. His fingers ached from inside and out now, the symmetry pleasing.

Mouthing the side of John’s prick, Sherlock looked up.

John looked back.

Pupils blown, features tight and slack at once. These tiny, high sighs that broke when Sherlock breathed on him. Near-giggles of arousal. Somehow more endearing than the rest of it. The taste was unpleasant, the scent possibly worth it. He released John’s hand and pulled a pair of pubic hairs out of his mouth. Wiped them on John’s thigh before returning his lips to firm skin.

“Oh god. Please.”

Warm hands in his hair, holding, steering, not pulling. Acceptable. John slid down the chair toward his mouth, legs spread wide.

“ _Please_.”

Sherlock swallowed him down.

John swore. _Fuck_ and _shit_ ; anal intercourse, John inside him, straining muscles and leaving traces. _Like that, more, harder_ ; need, instruction. _Want you, want you so bad; obvious. Gorgeous like this, god, your mouth_ ; infatuation. _Don’t stop_ ; addiction.

 _Sherlock_ ; love. Maybe. Close enough.

John’s testicles drew up and Sherlock pressed them down, thwarting ejaculation. John sobbed, twitching through orgasm. His palms pressed against Sherlock’s head, his fingers splayed outward to avoid hair-pulling. Wonderful John.

“Don’t stop. Oh god. Don’t stop.”

Of course not.

He drew back only enough to rest his jaw for a moment. Blew on wet skin. Used his hands and fingers and tongue. John jerked around him a second time, legs against his sides. His claim. His John. Established in saliva and semen on his chin.

A press of his face to John’s thigh, wiping his chin clean, then licking John’s skin clean as well. It diluted the taste somewhat. He nuzzled up to his lover’s crotch and repeated the service there. Delicately. John would be sensitive. One of John’s hands remained in his hair.

He laid his face on John’s thigh once again, this time keeping it there. The introduction then, the reality now. He breathed in the scent of satisfaction, breathed it in until his breathing was steady, his heartbeat slowing. Warm skin over hard muscle. He wanted to kiss it but felt the gesture would be a bit too much. Too much good could be a bit not good.

He nuzzled gently instead. Enough to make himself comfortable. Was his cheekbone digging into John’s leg? It might have been, but surely John was too lost in his post-orgasmic haze to care.

Once the haze began to fade, tension making its inevitable crawl back into John’s limbs, Sherlock closed his eyes rather than disturb John further. He ignored the protest of his spine. Judging by the degree of the ache, five minutes had already elapsed. He would remain limp. Remain here. He’d earned this. If John thought otherwise, Sherlock would make him see reason.

John touched his upturned cheek. He slid the backs of his fingers across his face and into his hair. Sherlock hummed appreciatively, sure John would feel the vibration of his throat against his thigh.

The muscles beneath his cheek tightened, the tension lifting his face a marginal distance. Tension, but of a different sort. It was heavy in a way which could only be subjectively measured.

A light touch across his ear travelled down his jaw. Fingertips beneath his chin, urging him to lift his face. Sherlock merely looked up, too content for movement.

What he saw.

John.

 _John_.

John was kissing him. John was bent in half, hands clasped about Sherlock’s face as if he were a thirsty child seizing a cup. The taste of his mouth was a welcome reprieve from the taste of his semen and Sherlock availed himself of it to the fullest. John rumbled. John pushed him back and clambered out of the chair after him. John pushed him back and pushed him down and climbed on top of him, his John with a jumper and jacket and no trousers.

Some squirming was required to keep his legs from being trapped beneath his body. Once accomplished, he sprawled out on the floor, devoid of qualms. John’s kisses were hard. His lips left no question of the teeth beneath them. John’s knees framed his hips, his hands pinned his shoulders. Even Sherlock’s feet were under John’s chair.

Oral fixation at last put to good use, John sucked on his tongue, captured it, stroked it with his own. Mine. Sherlock held the sides of his jacket. His. He had never kissed like this. Never been kissed like this. Not as necessity, never as more than compromise. John kissed as if he never meant to stop. John kissed until Sherlock was hazy and content, and then he kept going.

His left hand dipped beneath Sherlock’s jacket, smoothing the fabric of his shirt across his chest, wrinkling it, bunching it. His ribs seemed to be a point of interest. His breastbone. His nipples. The exploration was dragged out, instantaneous. John pulled his mouth away with a comical popping sound and bit his neck. A muscle in Sherlock’s back jolted, jerking him against the floor. John began to lick, tonguing his way to an ear. Uncomfortably damp, it almost tickled.

His right hand alternated between Sherlock’s shoulder and the floor. Pinned, trapped, claimed; the term was irrelevant. The importance was in the sense of conclusion. They were here. They had reached this point. John’s arm tired. Hand and knees put too much distance between their bodies at any rate. John removed his mouth, rearing up, kneeling over, not quite sitting on. Sherlock’s neck was wet and slightly chilled and John fumbled at the buttons of his shirt. Flushed, beautiful. So plain. So simple. So misleading.

Sherlock stroked the bare lengths of his thighs, the curve of his arse. The jumper preserved only a fraction of his modesty and therefore none at all. He was half-hard, bouncing slightly, ridiculously. Curious, Sherlock squeezed his arse to make him moan. John’s eyes fell shut. His head fell back. His mouth fell open. He pressed into Sherlock’s hands, ground needlessly against his crotch.

And froze.

“It’s all right,” Sherlock said. “I don’t mind.”

“You’re not hard,” John said.

“Obviously.”

John stared down at him, a warm weight on his body and under his hands. The hem of his jacket brushed against Sherlock’s wrists. His eyes had never been so wide. “Why?”

“It’s sexuality, not a medical condition.” There was no need for concern.

“No,” John said. He shook his head, stared at him again. “No, you.”

“Full sentences, John.”

John climbed off him, making a grab for his jeans in the same motion. Without him, the floor was cold. He darted behind his armchair and dressed there, his motions surprisingly unsteady.

Sherlock sat up. “Full sentences,” he repeated, and he loathed repeating himself. “Communication is key.” Oh, he wished he hadn’t said that. Each time Victor had said that, Sherlock had hated him a little. “I would also add that I am well-intentioned and you shouldn’t hate me for it.”

“‘Well-intentioned’,” John echoed. “You- _What_. Sherlock, you just blew me and you don’t even-you’re not-” He cut himself off, physically turning away to keep his remarks at bay.

Too late. Sherlock was already shot through with humiliation. “Oh, is _that_ what I was doing with your penis in my mouth? I had wondered. It certainly explains all the semen, thank you for clearing that up.” He crossed his legs and settled into a sulk. This wasn’t working the way it was meant to. Why wasn’t it working? And why now? Why did John mind now?

“Sherlock. What the fuck.” Jeans secured, John picked up his pants from the floor and shoved them into his pocket. Idiocy. That was going to chafe, particularly with the remains of an erection. “You didn’t even want to.”

“I didn’t mind.” He wasn’t going to say he’d wanted to. It would give the wrong connotations. He didn’t want the indignity or the taste. He wanted the contact and control, the ability to turn the neat doctor into a mess. “Besides, you wanted me to.”

“I didn’t ask!”

“Please,” Sherlock scoffed. “It was obvious.”

“But,” John said, “I _never asked_.”

Wrong. “You told me not to stop. Last week, too, you said you wanted to fuck me. Which is still on the table, by the way, if you avoid my prostate.” He paused. “And as long as it isn’t a literal table.” It was best to be clear about these things.

John’s mouth worked.

“It’s fine. There’s no need to be so self-sacrificing. Some people have libidos and you’re one of them. I understand.”

“Like hell you do!” John was shaking. His shoulders, his fists. Not the spasm in the back of his left hand, a different tension. He recoiled, stepping back behind his armchair. “Don’t touch me! Stop touching me!”

His hand halted.

Had he been reaching?

He ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it forward and back. “I don’t mind,” Sherlock told him impatiently. John’s stupid morality. “It’s all the same to me. I don’t care one way or the other.” As long as he could touch John. As long as they could return to the kissing and John marvelling at him and calling him brilliant. Because when this transpired, it felt very much as if John loved him, as if he’d already been trained into it. It didn’t matter if John loved him or not as long as Sherlock felt as if he did. He _needed_ that.

“I care,” John said and that was good. No, wait. Conversation, not internal monologue. Focus. That was bad.

“Then what do you want?”

“None of it,” John said.

“You’re lying,” Sherlock noted.

“I want you to stop touching me.”

“You’re still lying.”

“Sherlock!” John yelled. The two syllables of the ridiculous name contorted his face. “I need you to stop. How’s that? I need – _need_ – you to stop. Please. It’s not fair.”

“I’ve already said I don’t mind.”

“To me!” John yelled again. “It’s not fair _to me_!”

Sherlock frowned. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

John bent down, straightened, and chucked his shoe at Sherlock’s head.

He blocked involuntarily, arms crossed over his face. It struck his left elbow. “Domestic violence, John!” he bellowed at the man’s retreating back.

“Don’t start!” John warned, not so much as turning his head as he climbed the stairs to his room.

“No, of course not! You have already!”

But John wouldn’t be baited back. He wasn’t like Mycroft, always needing to deprive him of the last word. He wasn’t terribly much like Victor either, so capable of twisting verbal abuse on its head and bringing Sherlock to his knees. John was finished. John slammed his door and dragged a chair across the floor to it.

Sherlock continued to sit.

He looked at the ceiling.

He resumed his previous horizontal position on the floor and looked up at the ceiling again.

He chewed on his lip.

John had a gun up there.

After eighteen minutes, there was a tentative step on the stairs. Not from John’s room, from below.

“Yes, Mrs. Hudson?” he called.

“I’ve brought some biscuits, dear,” she answered from the hall. “Sherlock, are you- Where are you?”

“Floor.”

She popped her head in. “Oh. There you are.”

“Yes.”

“Would you like some biscuits?”

Flimsy excuse. Welcome company.

“Give them to John,” he said.

“Sherlock.” A coo of endearment. Maternal. Worried.

“John isn’t angry with you,” he explained. “If he sees you, he’ll calm down.”

“All right....” She came inside the sitting room anyway. Set the plate down on the table and picked up the flag pillow from John’s armchair. She knelt down next to him and tucked it under his head, forcing him to lift up for her. She smoothed his curls off his forehead. “Comfortable?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hudson.”

She bit her lip. “You know....” she said.

“I didn’t mean it,” he told her, shifting his head to better look her in the eyes. “John’s trained. He could incapacitate me in a number of ways, but he threw a shoe at me and aimed poorly. Once you give him the biscuits, he’ll feel terribly guilty for even that. Then neither of us has to apologize.” It evened out wonderfully. Mummy had always said mutual wronging meant both of them ought to apologize, but Sherlock had only ever subscribed to that theory with the aim of causing Mycroft further suffering.

“If you’re sure,” she allowed. “But, Sherlock, you know.” She tapped her hip, the history behind its stiffness.

“John isn’t abusive.”

“I mean more than just John, dear.”

Sherlock smiled tightly up at her. Like knew like, but they were congruent in shape, not identical in size. He could fit into places that could never be meant for Mrs. Hudson. He could even enjoy them. If he enjoyed them, they weren’t mistakes. Nothing was good or bad but thinking made it so.

“Right, well,” she said. “I enjoyed your violin tonight.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.”

“I particularly enjoyed the reasonable hour you played it at.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.”

She sighed and took John the biscuits.

Sherlock stayed on the floor. He woke in the morning with a blanket across his body and John’s shoes nowhere in sight.

 

 

 

 

It had been so simple.

Shaking in the flat after pulling off rain-drenched layers, John had pressed a mug into his hands. Sherlock had put his face into the steam and groaned.

“Did you just have an orgasm?” John asked. “Because I’ll admit, my tea is very good.”

Sherlock had glared at him.

John had sipped his own tea. Considered. “No, not quite orgasmic. Shame. You get to have all the fun.”

“Why?” he asked, willing to play the game. “You want one too?”

John shrugged. “Wouldn’t say no.”

He hadn’t, either. He’d said “what are you doing” and “Christ, yes, your hands are hot.” Sherlock had said “don’t spill” and John ejaculated and laughed and said “too late.”

Sherlock drank the rest of his tea, watching John over the rim until the man had flushed and turned and changed into dry clothes upstairs. John had returned, nervous and eager to please. “Would you like another, then?” he’d asked. Licked his lips and smiled.

“Yes,” Sherlock had said, handed John his mug, and received a laugh. He remembered to add “thanks” as he took his turn to dry and change. John had given him a full mug when he returned and looked at him expectantly, but Sherlock had already thanked him. His focus had swung back to the case moments later, his body filled with another man’s warmth.

He’d been so happy.

 

 

 

 

The shoes were gone. John had come. John had seen Sherlock lying where he’d put him but hadn’t done anything about it. Cursing himself for the lapse, for actually falling asleep now of all times, Sherlock threw the blanket onto the couch and tracked John’s movements through the flat that morning. Early that morning. The sun had yet to rise.

At some point before the present and well after midnight, John had come downstairs. He had encountered a dark room and nearly stepped on Sherlock in recovering the thrown shoe. That made the blanket obviously Mrs. Hudson’s doing, and from before midnight. Yes, it smelled of her detergent. If Sherlock and the blanket on the floor were unexpected, John’s trip down for his shoes had been his first venture outside his room since he’d barricaded himself in. He hadn’t made breakfast.

If John had intended to stay at 221b for the morning, he wouldn’t have risked argument by retrieving his shoes. The shoes were a clear indicator that John had gone somewhere. At this hour, where would that be?

He went upstairs to John’s empty room, opened the door, and saw the unthinkable.

The bed was unmade.

Sherlock threw open the closet. He searched to the bottom. John’s bag was gone.

He counted empty hangers, recalled how long it had been since John had last done laundry, and arrived at a significant figure. John was packed for five days. More precisely, John was packed to the capacity of his bag.

He bent over, yanked them off, and threw both of his shoes at the closet.

It didn’t help.


	4. Step Four: Control Damages

“Anything you can tell me,” Lestrade prompted.

He scoffed, turning over the corpse’s hand. Fresh scratch over light, thin scars. “Anything?” Down the body now, unlacing the shoes, pulling them off. He checked inside the shoe and regarded the socks. Lint. Human hair only. “She volunteered at an animal shelter. It’s either close to her... apartment, I’d say. Extremely close to her apartment or close to an Underground station. Meaning she lived at an apartment near an Underground station as well, one where they don’t allow pets.”

“Is that going to be important?” Lestrade asked, arms crossed. Tired. He wanted to lean against something but couldn’t in the morgue; the walls were too far away from the table. Also, on sheer principle, Lestrade never leaned. But he wanted to.

“Could be. I don’t know yet.”

There was a long silence as John didn’t ask him how he knew what he already knew.

There was an extended silence as Lestrade looked at the spot where John wasn’t.

Thank god for Molly.

“Molly!” he said. “You adopt your cats from a shelter. Does she look familiar?”

Molly popped over from where she’d been attempting to casually hover. She bit her lip as she looked at the woman. “Sorry, no. Still no I.D.?”

“None,” Sherlock agreed. “Considering her Oyster card was in her billfold, the theft must have occurred after she left the tube. Whether the thief also strangled her with piano wire remains to be seen. Rather, whether the killer stole her billfold to make it look like theft. Honestly, there are easier ways of mugging people.”

Wait.

“The killer and the thief are separate, working in tandem,” he realized.

“And we know this how?”

“You’ve seen the footprints. She went down the alley willingly. At a run. But she wasn’t being chased. She had her billfold out on the way to the Underground, it was snatched, and she gave chase. She pulls her mobile out as she runs and drops it when the second player in this little drama jumps out behind her.”

“Who walks down a London street with their billfold out?”

“A woman who just bought a hotdog with mustard and relish,” Sherlock replied. “It was on the ground, uneaten, less than four metres away from the vender.” He excluded the influence of pigeons in that statement. “It also happens to be on the front of her shirt, just there.” He pointed. The green and yellow blended in with the print of her top, a stain convenient for the top’s owner and inconvenient for everyone else. “She dropped it and her change when her billfold was taken. I imagine passersby picked up her change. Anyway, I’d talk to the hotdog vender if I were you. He must have seen the theft.”

Lestrade glanced away from him, toward the empty air where John wasn’t.

“Problem?” Sherlock asked.

“You tell me,” Lestrade said.

“If you’re going to say something, then say it.”

Molly touched his sleeve. “I’ll get you a coffee.” Excuse to leave, conflict aversion. Long strides confirmed it.

“Look,” Lestrade said. “What’s between you two is your business until you start making it my business. Lay off my people and I won’t say a word.”

“I have laid off.”

Lestrade lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah. Right.” He adjusted his coat. On his way out, excellent. “Just apologize to John before I have to arrest Anderson for killing you.”

“What makes you think it was my fault?” he demanded.

Lestrade looked at him.

“Fine,” Sherlock spat.

“Are you staying with the body?”

He nodded curtly, glaring at the corpse.

Lestrade walked three-fourths of the way to the door. He turned around. He didn’t sigh in the same way he didn’t lean against the wall. “How long is Dr. Watson planning to stay home? Just for damage control purposes.”

“He’s not.”

“What?”

“Home.”

This time, Lestrade did sigh. He bent his head and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Right. Anderson deserved what he got this time. _This_ time,” Lestrade stressed.

_What’s wrong, freak? Boyfriend doesn’t love you anymore?_

“He was surprisingly accurate,” Sherlock said. “For once.” Whether or not it held any degree of truth was of course irrelevant, but to have Anderson talking about John, for Anderson to refer to John as Sherlock never had.... Unbearable.

Lestrade looked at him. A different look. Recognition of Sherlock’s capacity for emotion. It made Lestrade’s expression oddly similar to John’s and Sherlock didn’t like that at all.

“Stop it. Get out.”

Raising his hands in a gesture of indifferent surrender, Lestrade left.

Sherlock studied the body. Why piano wire? Difficult to hold, required thick gloves to wield, fairly noticeable to prepare. The unending question of Sherlock’s life: who was being stupid now?

He thought and he thought. He didn’t focus, but he certainly thought. Come on, try. There was a perfectly good corpse in front of him. Why her? The piano wire and two-man effort meant preparation. The setting meant watching her habits – the men had counted on her buying a hotdog there. Clearly, she’d been observed for some time. The wire was unique and would have been noticed if this had been a pleasure killing. Not to mention the sloppy technique. Not a hired job. It reeked of amateurs who thought themselves clever. Who was in the lead, then? The thief, the strangler, or another individual?

A warm mug was pressed into his hands. He drank his tea and choked on coffee.

Molly snatched the mug back from him before he could spill on the corpse. Hot liquid scalded his hands through his gloves, but the corpse escaped.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” he rasped, then coughed again.

Mug in one hand, his arm in the other, Molly pulled him over to a sink. She peeled his gloves off with an elastic snap and pushed his hands under the tap. He surprised himself by letting her. Molly’s hands were less scarred than the corpse’s but the telltale signs of lifelong cat-ownership were clear.

Once she turned the tap off, they stood in silence. An inconvenient noise interrupted it.

“Was that your stomach?” she asked.

“Not important,” he said. There was no food at the flat. He kept forgetting. That would be problematic. He’d finished the last of the Weetabix this morning. The bread had been yesterday morning, once he’d picked the mould off it. Mycroft had promised to say nothing about his situation as long as he ate breakfast for the duration of it. If he didn’t buy more food, Mycroft would visit. And then he would say things. He would say things about John. It would be horrific.

“Have you eaten?” Molly asked.

“I ate breakfast.”

“It’s almost five,” she said.

“Six,” he corrected.

Abruptly tense, almost frantic, Molly checked her watch. She relaxed, then tensed again, now looking up at Sherlock. “It’s only four forty-eight.”

“What? Oh.” The time. Yes. No one was counting the days of John’s absence besides him.

His bag was packed for five days. John didn’t have the budget for new clothing. He’d done laundry somewhere else. The choice of returning to 221b would be more compelling at the end of each laundry cycle. Four more days.

“Sherlock?”

There was a small, feminine hand on his. He’d been staring at the sink. He looked at the hand.

Molly didn’t move it.

He considered asking her to. He considered simply pulling away and letting that be that. After all, Molly didn’t like him. Molly was blindly infatuated with a version of him that didn’t exist. She saw but she didn’t observe. He couldn’t particularly fault her for it either. It made her happy and her aim was happiness, not results. It was annoying, but he let her have her fun. Besides, annoying was par for the course. Women in his life fell into two categories: Mummy (subcategory: Mrs. Hudson) and Annoyance (subcategories: helpful, detrimental, suspect).

But right now. Her hand.

That wasn’t annoying. It was just sort of there. He wasn’t used to that. Nobody touched him. Mummy was dead, Mycroft was Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson limited it to special occasions, and John was somewhere out in the world without him, just like Victor. Nobody else touched him. Honestly, John didn’t touch him that much either. He still didn’t initiate. At least Victor had had the decency to collapse on top of him, warm and sprawling, if sweaty.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said and removed her hand. Now his hand was cold. Not simply from the water. “You just looked like you could use a friend.”

“And what does that look like?”

“Like you’ve had a crap week and no sleep. Basically, like you could use a hug and a nap.”

Sherlock looked at her.

“What?” Molly asked.

“I hadn’t considered that.”

Molly’s eyes flickered between his face and his chest. She stepped in, arms slipping between his sides and his elbows. She pressed her face against his shoulder with complete disregard of the way his hands moved about helplessly in the air behind her back.

“What are you doing?” he asked again. Then he felt the muscles of his shoulders begin to relax. “Oh,” he said. “That’s very effective.” Experimentally, he let his hands touch her back. Were her shoulders relaxing as well?

Molly laughed. Her giggle wasn’t at all like John’s. “I’m glad,” she said. She let him go and he didn’t have the timing down. For a moment, she was pulling back against his hands. Just as she tried to adjust to being held in place, he hastened to let her go and then they stood there, hyper-aware of their own arms, until Sherlock took a large step backward.

“Awkward,” she said.

“Only if you think it is.” He smiled as best he could.

She did the same.

“I’m going to leave now,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”

They walked away in opposite directions.

 

 

 

 

_Molly hugged me today. SH_

This received the exact same answer as his previous messages, which was to say, none. Nothing to _Why haven’t you come home yet? SH_ , nothing to _John, where are you? SH_ , and nothing even to _Let me know you’re safe at least. SH._

Simply nothing.

Well, nothing from John.

The unknown number and the order to _stop txting my brother_ had cleared a few things up, though.

 

 

 

 

It turned out to be three idiots, not two, as he’d expected. And, as it happened, they had killed the wrong woman by mistake. Amateurish had been too kind a term.

He texted Harry about it.

Her response of _wtf_ had been less than impressive.

_Tell John. SH_

_No u creepy bastard_

_He’d be interested. SH_

_Leave us alone_

John was still with her, then. Day eight.

 

 

 

 

On the morning of day nine, Sherlock realized there was nothing in the flat fit for human consumption.

Mycroft showed up by ten o’clock.

“I _would_ tell you how to fix this, but then you’d never do it,” the bastard sighed. He heaped pity onto his face and exasperation into his shoulders. He was sitting in John’s chair. “Too stubborn for your own good.”

“Shut up. He isn’t yours.”

“Nor yours, at this rate,” Mycroft agreed.

Sherlock was abruptly reminded of a large portion of his childhood. He had spent it determining whether he could master telekinesis the small amount necessary to cause internal bleeding.

Mycroft sighed another one of his heavy sighs. “No, Sherlock, I thought you learned this when you were seven: you can’t kill me with your brain.”

He could try.

“Wasted effort.”

What else was he going to do?

“There’s a great number of things you could be doing.” Mycroft rotated the handle of his umbrella, the tip against the carpet.

He turned his face away.

“No, no job. Not at the moment, certainly.”

_Must_ he smile like that?

“Yes, I really must. It does annoy you so.”

Sherlock glared.

“You’re not even giving me the silent treatment properly,” Mycroft lamented. “You’re taking the easy way out and letting me read your body language. How very fortunate that I know it. If I didn’t, I might be offended. I might, even, be hurt.”

Sherlock wished he would be.

“Yes, well, we can’t have everything, can we?”

He refused to dignify that with even a nonverbal answer.

“But you could have something, couldn’t you?” Mycroft went on. “More than you think you had, at any rate.”

“More than I _think_.” Indignation flung the words out of him. He knew what he had. He knew that he needed John and John wanted him. Coming from an alcoholic family and sporting a stress addiction of his own, John was even highly inclined to need Sherlock back. John was loyal and sentimental and would be inclined to love Sherlock, given time, or close enough to be satisfactory.

“You really are terribly dense sometimes, dear brother.”

“Stay out of my relationship. Stay out and keep out.”

“Yes, because Dr. Watson is a fort you’ve constructed and put a sign on.” There it was: the eye roll. “Sherlock, you don’t _have_ a relationship.”

Sherlock got up, went to his room, and slammed the door.

Four hours later, he came out. Mycroft’s PA was now in John’s chair. She didn’t look up from her Blackberry. “All right,” Sherlock said. “What did he mean by that?”

The woman clicked through a few menus and wordlessly handed the mobile to him. There was a video lined up on it. Sherlock hit play. The quality of the image was low, CCTV level. The angles confirmed it.

And there, a sight Sherlock had gone nine days without.

John was walking on the street at night. He wore his tan jumper beneath his coat. There was a woman with him. They were chatting. John looked happy. Excited. As did the woman. They went into a building. The camera turned. It was an Italian restaurant. Through the window, the chairs and tables were seen. They were clearly too small, meant for intimacy rather than comfort.

A time skip. John and the woman exited. John looked tired. Tense. Faking interest. The woman didn’t notice. She touched John’s arm as if she had any right to. John smiled and shook his head. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. They parted ways. John trudged homeward.

The video ended.

Sherlock handed the PA back her phone.

She left.

Sherlock stayed very still. He stayed very still indeed and then he went upstairs. He went to John’s desk and opened the drawer where John kept his gun and ammunition.

Both were gone.

In their place was the small notebook from John’s jacket.

He opened it to the last entry.

_Never theorize before possessing the facts. One inevitably twists the facts to suit the theory rather than the theory to suit the facts._

Oh.

Well.

It was hardly as if Sherlock had never been a hypocrite before.

 

 

 

 

Fact: John wouldn’t cheat on him. John wouldn’t cheat on anyone, and especially not for a date as bad as the one he’d just had.

Fact: In order to cheat on someone, one must be in a relationship with that individual.

Fact: John had gone on a crap date last week.

Conclusion: John did not believe that he and Sherlock were engaged in a romantic relationship.

But _why_?

 

 

 

 

“Molly.”

“I’m sorry, I’m heading home,” she said. “I can’t let you in today. Maybe you could ask Dr. Brent.”

“I’m not here for the morgue, actually,” he corrected. He didn’t mind the correction; it had been the sane assumption to make. Mrs. Hudson had been out. The skull, still missing, would have been of no use in this situation. “I need a hug again.”

Molly stared at him and then obliged. She tucked herself against him with an alacrity that the majority of the world would have been bewildered at. “How about tea?”

“God yes.”

...Had he just said that?

“Caffè Nero’s closest, but there’s a Starbucks and a Pret A Manger down the street, too.”

“A Caffè Nero next to a Pret A Manger.” That effectively described a third of London. “Will wonders never cease.”

She laughed again, using her stupid giggle that wasn’t John’s.

This was how Sherlock Holmes somehow wound up inside a Caffè Nero with Molly Hooper. As if the day hadn’t been disconcerting enough already.

The cup was wrong. For the tea. The tea was also wrong, but the cup itself served as a warning.

“Flatmate troubles?” Molly asked eventually. She had done an extraordinary job of leaving him be but ruined it after six minutes. Not bad, all things considered.

“Go on,” he said, leaning back in his chair. It wasn’t a chair conducive to leaning in, but he did it anyway. “Puzzle it out.”

Molly looked at him uncertainly.

Honestly. “You can’t think you’re that stupid.”

“I don’t think I’m stupid.” Irritation, largely to mask confusion, but also sincere.

“I don’t think you do. Therefore, you should have the confidence to at least try and reason it out,” he explained.

She waited a moment, possibly to see if he were done being tactless. He was, but only because he had finished speaking for the moment. “Well, I can see you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Obvious.”

“And you need to,” she added. “It’s about that man who’s usually with you. John Watson.” Her eyes divided their time looking between him, her coffee, and his tea. She brightened up at some sudden recollection. “You two were in the paper a couple weeks ago, did you see?”

Sherlock would have rolled his eyes, but then he might have resembled Mycroft.

“Okay, yes, you’re you,” Molly corrected herself. “Sorry. Did them forgetting his name spark something off? You, um. You do have quite the shadow to stand in.”

“We resolved that issue.” They had. John had been upset, Sherlock had taken action, and John had been happy. They had been happy. Sherlock drank his tea and it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

“‘That’ issue.”

Oh god, she was actually trying. Chewing on her lip and fighting the urge to fiddle with her hair. If she hadn’t been wearing it back, she would have been playing with it, he was certain. She was working herself toward some insignificant epiphany.

“Are you-” Biting her lip again. It made her mouth appear tiny. “I’m sorry, but, um.”

He looked at her mildly.

“Sherlock, are you... gay?”

There it ended, her little fantasy. It was a day for that, it seemed. “Yes. More precisely, a homoromantic asexual,” he replied. Precise didn’t necessarily mean accurate, but it sufficed for his purposes.

“Oh.”

He drank his tea. If only Mrs. Hudson had returned his skull. It would have saved everyone so much bother.

Molly said nothing. She wasn’t moving much either.

“Problem?”

“I, no, I-” She visibly shook herself. “Th-thank you for coming out to me. Your trust means a lot to me.” There was an extremely practiced quality to the words. She really had been making the same mistake her entire life, hadn’t she? “I- sorry, I don’t know what that term you used was.”

“Google it,” he advised.

“No, I mean: if you’re....”

“Asexual.”

“If you’re asexual, how can you still be gay?” She seemed to be coming around to the fact that whatever answer he would give, it would still exclude her from his love life.

“Which do you prefer: soft or firm mattress?”

“Um. Firm?”

“So do I,” he said.

“Oh.” And there it was, depression settling in. “Okay. And John doesn’t want to be a mattress.”

“That’s the gist of it.” He returned to his tea, giving her a few more moments to recover. He wondered if she’d keep letting him into the morgue. Now that he couldn’t bribe her with hope, what else could he offer?

“So now he’s moved out?”

“No,” Sherlock corrected immediately. “The majority of his things are still in the flat.” Just not the important ones.

“So he’s staying with a friend.”

“Sister. With his stupid alcoholic sister who thinks I’m a creepy bastard and is encouraging John to have nothing to do with me ever again.”

Molly attempted to cover his hand with her small one. “That’s just homophobic.”

“No, she’s a lesbian. I think it’s her overprotectiveness towards a brother who won’t allow her to look after him.”

“Oh.” She said that a great deal. It made her look terribly disappointed each and every time. Difficult to know when she actually was. Molly squeezed his hand in what was presumably a show of support. “Well, I’m sorry John doesn’t fancy you.”

“John does fancy me.”

He’d lost her completely. He could tell by the tension in her hand, not to mention the look on her face. “...You’ve lost me,” she admitted.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Even I thought it was going to be simpler than that.”

Molly removed her hand and prodded her coffee stirrer through the foam still in her cup. She didn’t look up when she asked, “Do you love him?”

“Obviously.”

She bit her lip.

“Out with it.”

“But he doesn’t love you,” she finished.

“He might. In a way. He’d die for me, so at least there’s that.” He frowned. “Does it matter?”

“Does it matter if the man you’re in love with doesn’t love you back,” Molly said. Statement of disbelief.

“I mean, is it any different?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” she answered. Her voice was as small as her mouth.

“I wouldn’t know either, but it doesn’t seem like it could be.” He forestalled her before she could disagree. “If you both do the motions of it, both take what you want from it, and are both happy, how can that matter? Everyone wins and no one gets hurt.”

“That sounds like a lot of hurt, actually,” Molly said.

“It isn’t, really. More a matter of compromise.” Frankly, he was amazed more people didn’t do it this way.

“What if John isn’t okay with not loving you back?”

Sherlock hadn’t thought of that. This had been a good decision after all, getting a result like that. “Do you think he wouldn’t be?”

Molly smiled at him sadly. “Most people can’t handle it.” Personal experience, clearly.

“John isn’t most people.” John wasn’t anything like most people. He only seemed to be. John knew and he’d handled it wonderfully. Hadn’t he? “And I’ve hardly begged him for his undying devotion. If he’d just come back to the flat, everything would be fine.”

She went on playing with that coffee stirrer. A minute or so later, she looked up, hell-bent on being helpful. Years of people, school and college and all levels of uni, all these people crying on her shoulder because she so wanted to help. How could she stand it? And yet she went on doing it. An incomprehensible person, but a fantastic resource. “What have you asked him for?”

“I told you: to come back to the flat.”

“I mean besides that.”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m not pressuring him.” He was behaving inappropriately, society might tell him, but John had only ever objected retroactively.

“No,” she said, looking impatient. Her, impatient at him! “I mean, what have you ever asked him for, romantically?”

“Tea.”

“Sorry?”

“I’ve asked him for tea. Which he supplied without qualm.”

“O...kay. What does he ask you for? Romantically.”

“He doesn’t initiate. Apparently, he hadn’t realized I’d instigated a relationship.” He paused. “This sounds bad, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. That sad expression was back, with a dash of resigned and just a touch of pity.

“So, from your expertise as a long-suffering sympathetic ear and damp shoulder, what happens now?” he asked.

“Well,” she said, “typically, this is where we get a pint of ice cream, two spoons and watch a bad movie.”

“You mean, surrender.”

She nodded.

He tried to consider it. Really, he did. “No,” he said. “That’s a horrible idea.”

Molly deflated.

“I meant the surrendering part,” he clarified. “Not the ice cream part. I can see how that would be nice.”

“Do you want ice cream?” she asked.

“No.” He wanted John and, apparently, couldn’t have him anymore. That was the crux of the problem.

If John hadn’t thought they were in a relationship, what had he thought was going on? Those jokes about Sherlock prostituting himself for tea, had he actually meant those? It had hardly been the tea he’d prostituted himself for.

No, those were still probably just jokes. John’s moral compass didn’t agree with prostitution. He would have put a stop to that.

Friends with benefits, then. But why the anger at the benefits?

No.

Wait.

Stop.

“I need more information,” he realized. “I keep making the same mistake.” It was a frustratingly simple mistake to make and-

“Oh,” he said. “ _Oh_.”

“What?” Molly asked.

“I think John might be, too.” That would make so much _sense_. No. Stop. He was theorizing again. Still, if John didn’t know, Sherlock ought to tell him. If John didn’t know Sherlock loved him, John would think himself in a terrible bargaining position, being sexually vulnerable. John would feel cornered and trapped. He would be inclined to fight and escape, as he had done. As it stood, if John already knew, the reminder could hardly make matters any worse. It would mean putting himself into an obviously vulnerable position, but the risk seemed worth it. “I need to check, at the very least.”

“Check what?”

“Molly,” Sherlock asked, “how do you prove you love someone?”

“Um,” Molly said.

“Think!”

“You do something ridiculous.”

“I do ridiculous things every day. I need something better than that.”

“Something ridiculous, for the other person? That you wouldn’t normally do? Sherlock, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“No,” he said. He stood. Downed the rest of his tea, even if it wasn’t the same as John’s. “I know what I’m doing. This time.” He slammed the cup back onto the table and said, because Mummy had always told him to and sometimes he even remembered: “Thank you.”

Despite the rare appearance of Sherlock’s manners, Molly didn’t look terribly pleased. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. This is _perfect_.”

“What is?”

He grinned wildly. “Autons!”

With that, he swept out of the building, success well within his grasp.


	5. Step Five: Analyze Results

Yelling, he could have handled. Apologies, he could have accepted. Silence, he could have overcome. There was an entire range of reactions from John that Sherlock had been prepared to cope with if or when the man picked up his mobile. Naturally, John managed to surprise him entirely. 

John picked up before the third ring. He was speaking immediately and with the most beautiful words Sherlock had ever heard. “Sherlock? Are you all right? What’s going on?”

“I may have caused myself irreparable brain damage,” he said.

“If you’re joking, I’ll kill you.”

“What if I’m only exaggerating?”

“Maim, then.”

He closed his eyes, visualizing John’s progression through one expression to another. “All right,” he said. “Fine. Come home and maim me. I’ve hardly changed the locks.”

“No, Sherlock, really – what’s going on? You never call people.” Confused. Wary. Hooked.

“I couldn’t be sure you were reading my texts.”

John didn’t answer. He’d been reading.

“It stood to reason that the only way I could be sure of your attention was to call.”

John made a noise very similar to a scoff. A pause. A sigh. Annoyance to resignation. “So what important thing do you have to tell me?”

“I already told you: I just finished watching a monstrosity called ‘Terror of the Autons’ and may have caused myself irreparable brain damage.”

There was a long silence down the line. 

“It was the most boring thing I have ever seen. It was worse than sitting through one of Mycroft’s stupid cello recitals when we were small. Anderson is more intelligent than this. And it took forever. That wasn’t a television programme, that was a feature length film of idiocy.”

“Wait,” John said. His voice was very nice, pressed up by Sherlock’s ear. “You’ve been sitting at home watching _Doctor Who_?”

“You kept referencing it,” Sherlock deflected. “I can’t see why. It’s more crap than crap telly. I can’t believe I sat through the entire thing. It was physically painful by the end. No, by the middle. By the middle of the first instalment, John. The first out of _four_.”

There was an odd sound from down the line, but Sherlock would recognize it anywhere, even over a phone and muffled by John’s hand. God, that giggle. “You’re insane,” John said. 

“Driven to that sad state over two agonizing hours,” he confirmed. 

“Obviously.” Still mimicking, unintentional now. Unconscious similarity. Sherlock had been incorporated into John’s phraseology. 

“Come home and I’ll watch another.”

John went quiet. 

“You’d have to watch it with me,” Sherlock continued. 

“And get brain damage?” His voice had grown soft. Not in volume but in quality. Against Sherlock’s ear. Soft and wondering and there and maybe there was something to be said for ringing people up after all, provided those people were only a person and that person only ever John. 

“It would save you the bother of having to maim me,” he explained. 

John’s indecision was audible. 

“Also, you’ll need to do laundry again tomorrow, so-”

John laughed. 

God. 

Sherlock pressed his mobile hard against his ear. “John?”

“No,” John said. “Neutral ground.”

Unacceptable. Reasonable. Fine. “Regent’s Park.”

“At this time of night? No. Somewhere warm. The Volunteer.”

“It’s practically next door. You’ll pass by me on your way from the tube stop.”

“Problem?”

Yes. “No. If you didn’t pass by me, we would end up going to the Globe or the Metropolitan.”

“Or Pizza Express.”

“We are not going to Pizza Express.”

“There’s a Pizza Hut around the corner,” John suggested. “Or we could go to Subway and, you know, eat fresh.”

“Shut up.”

He could hear John grinning as he said, “Make me.” 

There was so much he wanted to say to that. “Just meet me there.”

“What time?”

“How long will it take you to get there?”

“Dunno. Forty minutes?”

“In forty-five minutes, then.”

“Sherlock.”

“Best get your jacket, John.”

“Sherlock.”

“You’re still not moving, I can hear you not moving.”

“I’m not going to come running back to you.”

“A brisk walk will do,” Sherlock assured him. 

“You arrogant prat.”

“Forty-four minutes, John!” And he hung up, shaking inside. 

 

 

An hour and a half later, Sherlock was still sitting outside the pub. The man on the bench next to him was on his third cigarette and the second-hand was smoothing Sherlock’s nerves just enough to make the situation tolerable. It was crowded, everyone with drinks wanted Sherlock to give up his seat at the outdoor table, and nothing remotely interesting had happened in an hour. Once the fifty-minute mark had passed, he’d tried calling again. John had either turned his mobile off or was on the Underground. 

Sherlock sat and hoped and inhaled. 

“Sure you don’t want one?” the man – accountant, three children, second wife – offered yet again. 

He was itching for one. If he thought John wouldn’t mind the taste, he would have been chain smoking however many cigarettes the man would give him. Then again, if John didn’t come after all, if John wasn’t the figure rounding the corner with that black jacket and slight, barely perceptible limp-

“I’m sure,” he told the man, standing. He put his hands in his pockets and watched John walk. Ridiculous, how much better the world became for John simply being there. John was willing to be with him even while annoyed. How could this possibly improve? 

“Sorry I’m late.”

“Now who’s the prat?” Not his best comeback, but he would rather resume their previous conversation than attempt a new one. 

“Harry, actually.” John put his hands in his pockets as well. “She nicked my shoes and told me it was an intervention.” He smiled weakly. “Thought that was a bit rich, coming from her.”

“Siblings are idiots.” 

John glanced up at the nearest CCTV camera. It was pointed in their direction. “Inside?” John suggested.

“No space. Just turn your back to it.”

“I’m getting a drink,” John said, not sitting. “Want anything?”

“I’m fine,” he lied. Tea would be misconstrued. 

“Okay.” John went inside.

Sherlock waited at the table.

John returned. Sat. “Not really fair to Harry if I come back smelling like beer,” he explained, clearly long accustomed to justifying soft drinks in pint glasses. 

“Or you could come home,” Sherlock suggested. From here, all it would take was a brisk walk and twenty seconds.

There it was, that nonverbal acknowledgement of Sherlock’s social ineptitude. “If I’d wanted to come home, I would have,” John told him.

“I’d noticed.” A glance at the pub to emphasize his point. 

“Yes. Well.” John feigned an interest in his drink. “I think it’s safe to say that I can’t deal with this.”

“We can do something else,” he promised. 

“Sherlock, I don’t even know what we’re doing now,” John told him. 

“But you don’t want out.”

“Of course I want-” John checked himself, his manners muting him before he could shout. Too many people about for that. He swallowed. Turned his head to the side. Turned his head back and looked Sherlock in the eyes. “I want something else.”

“I told you, we can do that.” So much repeating himself. Only for John. “I’ll follow your lead.” 

“You, what? No. No,” John stressed. 

“If it’s a matter of enthusiasm-”

“No more.” John shook his head. “I’d rather you did nothing than watch you fake it.”

“Then it’s fine, because I haven’t faked anything.”

John’s eyebrows shot up. His eyes darted down to the table, through it, in the unmistakable direction of Sherlock’s crotch.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, heedless of the resemblance to his brother. “Please.” He leaned forward, reaching inside his coat. John leaned back with a soldier’s instincts. He didn’t relax at all at the sight of his little notebook. Sherlock set it on the table between them, open to the last entry. He tapped the lines of John’s scrawl. 

“Okay,” John said slowly “What am I missing?”

“Primarily, that asexuals have needs too.”

John’s eyes were full of confusion and wariness, but the anger was gone. “Okay. Would you care to elaborate on that?”

“No.” And when the anger returned, he added, “It’s better if I don’t.” John was annoyed at Sherlock’s seeming disinterest, that was clear enough. If he knew Sherlock’s interest was emotional rather than sexual, he would no longer be annoyed, but he might be uncomfortable. Molly could be right. She was rejected often enough to know. Besides, if John hadn’t cottoned on by now, he was being willingly obtuse. That never boded well.

“But then I don’t have all the facts,” John pointed out. Elbows planted on the table, he folded his hands and looked at Sherlock over them. His eyes were patient and kind and just a little devious. Sherlock’s will to resist crumbled accordingly. 

He dug his heels in anyway, but oh, John. “You won’t like it,” he warned.

“Don’t like being kept in the dark either.”

Sherlock glanced away, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from looking back at John. It had been far too long.

John drank his ginger ale, eyes locked on his flatmate’s face. Up with the glass, down with the glass; the gaze remained steady as he folded his hands once more. 

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to leave-”

“I love you.”

John went silent. 

There was a feeling inside his chest at that silence. He recognized it: complete and utter panic. That wouldn’t stop John from leaving. Just the opposite. 

“That wasn’t funny,” John said. His clasped hands lowered to the table. His voice had lowered even further. Something between a growl and a hiss, anger forced into a polite volume.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he agreed. 

“Then you’re a complete bastard and you should take that back.”

Sherlock lifted his chin. “No. I told you, you wouldn’t like it. You didn’t listen.” 

John’s mouth worked. Not the way it did when he was angry, curiously enough. He was one of those words that sounded sillier than they should have: flabbergasted, gobsmacked. Bewildered. “Private. Now.” He snatched up his notebook from the table. When Sherlock didn’t follow, John snatched up his hand as well and pulled him up off the end of the bench. 

Sherlock wove their fingers together. John cut off the circulation in his hand. 

It was glorious. 

John kept on going, eyes darting to the CCTV cameras. “Where’s a blind spot?”

“I’ll make one,” he promised, stopping. That they were metres from their front door was fully intentional. John stopped with him. “I’ll need my hand back, though.”

John’s hand twitched away. 

“One moment....”

_Stop watching and I’ll  
tell you how it went in  
the morning. SH_

“There.”

“Nothing’s happenin- Oh.” 

The closest camera turned away. Good enough.

“So,” John said. He’d put his notebook away while Sherlock had texted. “Care to run that by me again?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’ve gone on my knees. I’ve even watched your stupid programme. Do you need me to write it on my forehead?”

“Might be helpful, yeah,” John replied. “Is this how you usually go around declaring things?”

“Fifty percent of the time, if that qualifies as ‘usually’. I wasn’t the one to initiate, last time.” Following Victor’s lead had been so much simpler than conducting this mess himself. 

John took a moment to process this. It was a long moment. “You want to... date? But you don’t actually want to have sex.”

Sherlock shrugged. 

“I don’t have your mindreading powers, Sherlock,” John reminded him. 

Sherlock stared over the wrought-iron fence to painted concrete. In the light from the streetlamp, it looked almost like real stone. No traffic to change the lighting, barely any. Three cars per minute, on average.

“Do you really love me?” Like it was this strange, unbelievable thing. Not even a viable possibility in John’s mind. Not terribly surprising. It hadn’t been in Victor’s either. 

“That’s not open for discussion.”

“Christ.” Whatever expression was on John’s face, Sherlock didn’t dare look at it. “You actually do.”

“I thought you knew,” he said, neck aching to keep his face turned away so resolutely. “About me. And you didn’t mind, more or less. That’s why I thought it would be all right to proceed. It was my mistake and I’ll correct it.” John hadn’t known and so John hadn’t played. That was why John had never taken the initiative. Why hadn’t he seen that? 

“‘Correct it’? What? No.” John shook his head. “No. Sherlock, come here.”

He didn’t move. “Why?”

“Because.” And John moved for him.

John’s hand on his lapel. John’s mouth pressing up against his. Lips closed, the pressure hard. Firm. Gentle. Demanding. Everything. A car passed by and John didn’t react. As if he didn’t care they’d been seen.

Sherlock screwed his eyes shut. Too much, too much, too much. He needed more. God, this. How was he going to be able to live with this being dangled over his head? He’d spend every waking hour jumping for it. He wouldn’t be able to prevent it. 

A soft noise registered as John pulled his mouth away. John was shushing him. Petting his hair. “It’s all fine,” John said. Kissed his jaw. “I promise, it is.”

“What do you want?” 

“What?” 

Right, too vague. “What do you want me to do?” he clarified. Clearly, the relationship was back on. Actually on, this time. What did he have to do to keep it? 

John pulled back to frown, eyebrows lifting and pulling in. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t be dense.” He wouldn’t be able to stand it if John played coy. “What do you want from me in exchange?”

The frown deepened. “You mean, like handjobs and tea? You-” Confusion found realization and boiled over into incomprehensible anger. John bit his own mouth shut until it came down to a simmer. “You mean sexual favours for me being kind to you.”

“Yes.”

“No.” 

“No?” What was he upset about _now_? Really, this was getting ridiculous. 

“That? More than a bit not good.”

“It’s a feasible dynamic.”

“Oh god,” John said, sounding faint. “I thought you were taking advantage of me.”

“Apparently, I was.” He could see why John had been upset now. John wasn’t someone who should be used. He wouldn’t enjoy it at all. After a moment, Sherlock remembered what else he was meant to say. “Sorry.”

“I know we’re never going to do something, oh, I don’t know, normal, but we’re not doing that,” John told him. “I’m not doing that to you. You can’t possibly think I’m doing that to you.”

No amount of trying could keep the disappointment off his face. “Oh.” He swallowed something thick in his throat, some psychosomatic lump of emotion. 

“God, Sherlock. You deserve better than that.”

“A very subjective concept,” he replied. “I’m more concerned with what I can get, deserving or otherwise.”

“You have me,” John said. “And a deep-seated need for therapy, but I don’t think you’re going to do anything about that one.”

“On what terms?”

“No terms.”

“There are always terms.”

“All right,” John said. “What are yours?”

“You have to come home.” That sounded needy. “Long-distance is pointless and Mrs. Hudson has been hiding my skull again.” Better. “Besides, I need you to pay your half of the rent.” There. Satisfactory. 

“Okay.” A gentle nod. John hovered in front of him, blunting himself, rounding out his edges the way his jumpers softened his body. As if suddenly convinced Sherlock was fragile. Why? 

“The second condition is monogamy. Your eyes can wander, but none of the rest of you.”

John nodded again. He looked unsurprised but, if anything, his protectiveness increased. It was... wonderful. In a way. But it was also disconcerting. “What else?” John prompted when Sherlock didn’t continue. 

“That’s all.” 

“That’s a start,” John corrected. “What about, what was it, that bit about prostates and nothing on tables?”

“You’re obviously not going to put me into a position I’m uncomfortable with.” John would notice and he wouldn’t get off on it. It would go against the entire point of having sex in the first place. The “if you physically upset me, I get cuddled” clause would have no place here. Pity. He’d enjoyed abusing that particular condition of his last arrangement. 

“No, I’m not,” John agreed. “I was starting to get scared you didn’t know that.” His left hand rose between them, then stopped. “Can I touch you?”

“You’re perfectly capable.”

“I’m perfectly capable of a lot of things, Sherlock.” This was something Sherlock had noticed with no small amount of glee. John could shoot people and make delicious tea and look at Sherlock as if he were seeing something extraordinary instead of merely impressive. No – something cherished. No man had ever looked at him like that before. “The question is whether you want me to.”

He couldn’t answer that. There was no faster way of losing his bargaining position. Even having been told, John clearly didn’t recognize the degree to which he had a handle on Sherlock. The only thing for it was to keep him in the dark as long as possible. He answered instead, “If I don’t want you to, I’ll say so.”

“Condition one,” John said. “I want to be wanted. If I go where I’m not wanted, I need to be told. No indifference. No self-sacrifice. Mutual participation only.” 

How needy would it sound to agree to that? “What if-”

“That’s non-negotiable.” 

Never mind. If John became suspicious when Sherlock didn’t call him on anything, they could deal with that later. “Fine. Second condition?”

“Condition two is condition one, just the other way around,” John replied. “And this time, you pay attention.”

“Simple enough.”

“It is as long as you do it.” A small amount of vehemence there. Confusion turned into anger? No. John had qualms. Sherlock had exacerbated them. 

“I will,” he promised. 

John stared at his face. 

“I’m not lying,” Sherlock told him. 

“No, I believe you,” John said. “I’m still working my head around the part where you love me.”

“You can drop it already.”

John grinned stupidly. “It’s fine, I won’t tell anyone. I already knew you weren’t a sociopath.”

“ _Drop it_. And I’m still high-functioning.”

John laughed. “That’s one word for it.”

“That’s two hyphenated words.” He felt better for the correction. It was difficult to sound needy and critical at the same time. 

John, damn him, understood anyway. Thankfully, he said the best thing he could have said anyway. “So, home?”

“Really?” Did he realize he was abandoning his drink? Would he care that Sherlock had no intention of reminding him? 

“Yes.”

“Harry will throw a fit.”

“And don’t I know it.” He smiled tightly now, but the expression soon turned true. “Christ, you’re ridiculous.” His expression sobered. The realizations of what and whom he would have to put up with. “You know this is going to be difficult, right?”

“I’m aware.” Cost and benefit. Positive net benefit leading to significant gain, a worthwhile enterprise. Some part of Mycroft going on about economics had eventually stuck. It was applicable. 

“Okay,” John said, and kissed him, and oh, it was applicable. 

 

 

They took it slowly. For someone who kept saying that there would be no terms, John set a great deal of them. It was wonderful. Sherlock knew exactly what to do at any given moment. For his part, John soon learned that the relationship did not extend to the contents of the fridge. He’d been angry about that, particularly after what had happened to his breakfast, but Sherlock had to stand firm on something, or else John would get suspicious. 

Best of all, John wasn’t remotely bothered by his affections. As expected, he seemed to take the same glee in the knowledge of his emotional control over Sherlock as Sherlock did in his physical control over John. The gamble had paid off. It was balanced. It required some amount of negotiation, but it worked. 

John had been working to even out his sexual debt. Not something Sherlock could allow him to do entirely, of course, but he was more than willing to enjoy the process. John sat shoulder-to-arm with him on the couch. John came over and massaged his shoulders after one made an unpleasant clicking sound. John went on making the tea and doing the shopping and looking at Sherlock the way Sherlock looked at Stradivarius violins. When Sherlock smiled at him after each act, John brightened up in return. The imbalance had been affecting him more than Sherlock had realized. Accordingly, he resolved to keep it smaller in the future. 

John took to kissing him. Not satisfactorily, but it was a start. If Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, working on an experiment, John kissed the top of his head while passing by. If they were on the couch, so close to cuddling, John turned his head, pressed his lips to Sherlock’s shoulder, and resumed watching telly. 

John also took to masturbating. A lot. If Sherlock ever realized halfway through an experiment that John wasn’t downstairs with him, his flatmate was inevitably upstairs, having a wank. It was more than a little ridiculous. John was growing tetchy – when he wasn’t being unrelentingly kind, that was. Clearly, the sexual debt was fading. 

Something would have to be done. 

 

 

While he was working out what that something was, certain noticeable changes in his life occurred. 

First, Harry Watson began texting him with some regularity. Dwindling regularity, fortunately. Mainly threats that meant she loved John. Sherlock would have responded, as he clearly loved John more, but John flatly told him not to answer back. 

“I’ll ignore yours if you ignore mine,” he’d said, showing Sherlock his latest text from Mycroft. 

Really, Sherlock was getting the better end of that deal. 

Second, the hugs from Molly continued unabated. John had been speechless. Lestrade seemed to believe he’d developed a problem with his eyesight, or possibly schizophrenia. Frankly, it bewildered even Sherlock, but he liked hugs. 

He liked even more the resulting way John put his hand on the small of his back. Each time Molly let go of him, John’s hand would find its way there, sliding down his spine through his coat. 

Not to mention, the look on Lestrade’s face at that? Perfection. Sherlock had dreams of that expression transposed onto Mycroft’s smug features and woke up better-humoured than he had in years. 

Third, Anderson. 

For the first time in Anderson’s life, the idiot had brought about something marvellous. 

Walking onto a crime scene, Sherlock may have had a moment of losing track of John. He checked for the man when he left, not when he arrived, so it was hardly some dreadful piece of neglect. 

Anderson thought otherwise: “Boyfriend still missing, then?”

And John, walking up behind them: “Boyfriend stopped to tie his shoe, actually. What’ve we got there, broken neck from a fall?” 

This surpassed Lestrade’s Molly-induced expression by _miles_. 

And John, half an hour later, climbing into the taxi. He held in his laughter only until the door was shut and the address given. “Did you see his face?” he crowed. His laughter made its natural deterioration into gasps and giggling. “That was brilliant. I want to do that _every day_.”

“I love you.” Impossible not to say. He’d tried. 

And John. His smile. His eyes soft. The way he said “Come here, you” and reached for Sherlock. The way the kiss broke back into those giggles. Sherlock kissed him through it until the laughter subsided and John began to hum. “Yes, please,” he said against Sherlock’s mouth, all confidence, no begging. Approval.

Perfect, save for one detail. 

“Defenestration,” Sherlock reminded him. He didn’t have the time or focus to jerk him off while a case was on, not if he wanted to gain anything from it. All the same, he didn’t pull back, especially not when the cab went around a corner and John tumbled against him just a little.

“Yeah, yeah.” And he kissed Sherlock again. He pulled back abruptly a second later, a startled look across his face. “Sorry,” he said to the cabbie. “This doesn’t normally happen.”

Sherlock sunk into his seat. He tried not to and it happened anyway, just like a love confession. 

The cabbie laughed. “Trust me, that was tame compared to what I’ve seen.”

John and the cabbie chatted on, John sneaking his hand into Sherlock’s as if giving a sulking child a toy to distract him. It worked, but that was hardly the point. 

Getting out, Sherlock paid the cabbie and the cabbie winked at them. Again, John didn’t seem to mind. Not the cabbie’s behaviour, at least. “Sherlock,” John began, “you know I-”

“There’s a murderer to catch! This isn’t the time to talk about _feelings_.” There would never be a time to talk about feelings, not if he had anything to do with it. He knew John was fine with his affections but there was no sense in continually shoving them in the other man’s face. 

“Right, yeah.” John smiled indulgently. “But you do know-”

“Yes, yes, will you come _on_ already.”

Shaking his head, John followed him all the same. 

 

 

“That was brilliant,” John kept saying. “Really, that was amazing.”

A man who became horny at intellectual stimulation. Sherlock could take this places. Upstairs in a minute, for a start. For now, he stopped on the landing, halfway up those stairs. He turned, his motions unexpected by the man following at his heels, and John almost collided with him. As dismissively as he could, he said, “It was simple.”

“When it’s convoluted enough that it takes five minutes for even you to explain, it’s not simple.” John lifted his face. Permission? Or unconscious, trained into him? 

Either way, Sherlock took advantage of the opportunity. 

John was wonderful at kissing. It must have been from the women he’d dated, the need to ply them with acts of affection before getting to the sex. However it had come about, he really was quite brilliant. Since when could kissing be playful? John played with his mouth, toyed with his lips, his tongue. Those hands, slipping beneath his coat, splaying against his back. Pulling him closer. 

Sherlock set him against the wall. Captured him. His John. His John relaxing into him, hands secure on Sherlock’s body. Hands moving. Investigating – very good, John.

He risked moving his own hands. He lifted them from John’s sides to remove his scarf. Into his pocket that went, joining two paperweights. That done, he shrugged out of his coat. It fell with a very loud thump. 

“What the hell are you keeping in there?” John laughed into his mouth. 

Sherlock kissed him quiet and kept him that way for the time it took Mrs. Hudson to come check on them. All noises from their flat were steadfastly ignored, but the stairs were a different matter entirely. 

“Sherlock?” she called from below and behind him. “Are you- Oh. Never mind!”

“Hello, Mrs. Hudson,” John said, face hidden by Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock kept his thigh pressed against John’s crotch. It was a complete lack of subtlety and unendingly effective. 

“Glad you two made up, dear, but if you wouldn’t mind keeping it upstairs?”

Sherlock shifted his leg and watched John focus very hard on keeping silent. “Yes, Mrs. Hudson,” he said for them both. He pulled back and let John go first, ostensibly to help the man hide his erection, more truthfully to steer him. He picked up his coat, crouching rather than bending to do so. “Upstairs, then?” he asked John, sure to look up at him from that position. 

Sporting all the symptoms of arousal, John took an extra second to respond. He nodded. “Upstairs.” As expected, his voice had dropped in pitch. 

John took a bit more guiding than even that, needing to be kept on the stairs to get to his room rather than the couch. He got the message when Sherlock chucked his coat in through the door and went right past it. As expected: much more pliable when flustered. One more flight and there. John’s room. 

Sherlock closed the door and John reached for him. Kissing, more kissing. “Whatever you want,” John murmured, ducking his head to mouth at Sherlock’s neck. “No pressure.” His ear. “None.” Hands over his shoulder blades. 

He kept quiet. Caught John’s mouth again. Walked him back against that bare spot of wall and found that particularly sensitive place on John’s neck.

“You like this position,” John noted between soft little sounds. His hands slid down Sherlock’s sides, held above his hips. “I’m not normally on this side of it. It’s nice.”

“It can be nicer.”

John had some sort of involuntary response to a thigh against his crotch that Sherlock found fascinating. Before was the tease, now the reality. The forewarning didn’t seem to have acclimated John to the concept. “Oh, fuck,” he breathed. His hips bucked forward, grinding his erection against Sherlock’s leg before he stopped himself. “Wait, no. Not ready. You don’t have to.”

“I hardly need to be protected from your penis, John.”

“If you don’t want sex, you shouldn’t have it.” This insistence was significantly softened by further application of pressure and suction to, respectively, his crotch and neck. 

“What if I want to watch?” he dared to ask. Not _what if I want you_. Not _a sexual debt means you’ll stay._ Definitely not _what if I want proof you need me too_. Not that, never that, don’t be needy. Don’t smother and don’t show weakness. Nothing but interest. Interest was good. Safe.

“What, you want to jerk me off for science?” John asked, somehow managing an incredulous tone despite his transition into a deliciously vocal mess. 

Sherlock laughed and then John laughed with him, high and breathy. 

“No, really, do you?”

“There’s been sufficient research on that subject already, I think.”

“Good.” John’s hand on the back of his head, John insisting on kisses. Rewards for good behaviour. Fine, then, no sexual experimentation in the literal sense. When Sherlock set about unbuttoning his shirt, John reciprocated. “This all right?”

It was a bit cold. Not unbearable. “Yes.” 

Off with John’s shirt, down with his pants and trousers. “Shoes,” John protested, hobbled by his clothing. 

“Too bad.” 

Once certain it would catch John off-guard, Sherlock dropped to his knees. No sooner was he down than his mouth was on John’s prick, turning protest into incoherency. 

“Sherlock- fuck- no, I thought- _fuck_ -”

He waited for John to grow truly inarticulate before pulling off with a pop. Looked up at him mildly. “Are you asking me to stop?”

“Oh god,” John said, gasping. 

Holding eye contact, Sherlock grinned. 

“Okay, yes, you’re enjoying yourself, no problems here.”

No problems at all. Just John and heat and the slap of two palms against the wall as Sherlock sucked him down. Simple. Besides the growing aches in his jaw and knees, he couldn’t see what John had been making so much fuss about. Especially when John wanted it. Especially when he was vocal about wanting it, vocal and beautiful. Sherlock looked up, slightly regretful he hadn’t paid more attention to that scar before kneeling down, and John, John was staring down at him. 

John looked directly into his eyes and his cock jerked in Sherlock’s mouth. John’s head lolled, his eyes tried to fall shut, but he fought it, the strain obvious, fought to keep looking, keep watching. Like some sort of facial spasm. 

“Gorgeous.” A rough gasp. “You are. Best thing I’ve ever seen. Perfect like that, Sherlock, you – are – so....”

His eyes fluttered shut when he came. 

He melted against the wall, under Sherlock’s hands. 

Panting. 

Spent. 

His. 

Sherlock licked him clean and, with his face pressed against John’s hip, untied his flatmate’s shoes. 

John recovered. Cooperated in removing his shoes and bunched trousers. Kept a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “Think I need to lie down,” John said. He sounded the same as he did when dizzy from laughter. 

“Bed,” Sherlock agreed, standing, and John kissed him. Warm, loose-limbed. His muscles the closest they ever came to being soft. Theirs was a happy, sated tumble across the room. Sherlock removed his footwear as well while John peeled off his socks, unselfconscious in his nudity. 

Very unselfconscious. The most Sherlock had ever seen in person. “Keeping your trousers on?” John asked when Sherlock didn’t immediately follow suit. “I don’t mind, I’m only asking.”

“No sense in wrinkling them.” Just as there was no sense in letting a good excuse pass him by. Sherlock took them off, kept his pants on. He crawled onto the bed after John and was pulled down immediately. John rolled him over, laid him out on his back, and covered Sherlock’s body with his own. A sleepy nuzzle pressed John’s face against his neck, kept him there. Sherlock stroked his back. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked. Once they were under the blankets, John would likely sleep. Right on top of him. Already, his mind felt a little less crowded. Softer. More comfortable. 

“Give me a minute.” A contented mumble. 

“If you need one.”

Unfortunately, John took far less than even that. John sat up into a straddling position, hands ghosting across Sherlock’s torso. Uncertain of what this was about, Sherlock availed himself of the opportunity to look. Upon comparison, the skin of John’s chest was darker than that of Sherlock’s hands. His scar was out of comfortable reach, skin raised, dark, intricate. A different shade from his nipples. Little chest hair, difficult to see due to the shade. Sherlock touched his hips, his thighs, his knees. 

He realized John was staring at him too. 

Once caught, John smiled softly. He didn’t look away. His hand stroked up Sherlock’s chest and neck. Fingertips on his face. Brushing his hair off his forehead. John’s eyes were so open. 

Sherlock shut his. He couldn’t stand it. He didn’t want John to see him, not when he would actually observe. He didn’t want John to leave. Was this why Victor had made him stop staring? With that sudden understanding, much was forgiven. 

Shifting weight. Hands beside his head. Gentle kisses. Eyes closed, he lifted his face for them. 

“Your turn,” John murmured. 

“I’m not going to come,” he answered, dismissive. “You might as well save yourself the frustration.”

“That’s fine.” Slowly nuzzling up to his ear. “It’s still your turn.”

“What does that even mean, ‘my turn’? The sex is over. We just had it.”

“Half of it,” John wrongly corrected. He went back to sucking Sherlock’s earlobe. It was... strange. Damp.

“I already told you, I’m not going to come.” His hands didn’t seem able to leave John’s back. His spine and shoulders, the movement of muscle, the heat of him.

Propped up on one forearm, the other hand stroking his side. “Does that bother you?”

“No, why should it?”

“Then it doesn’t bother me.” Mouthing his neck, touching him, legs pressed against his. “Second girlfriend I had, she had problems getting off, too. I’m used to being graded on effort.”

The image of John inside a woman wouldn’t leave his brain. He wrinkled his nose at it. “John, unless you want me to start talking about my ex too, I’d advise you to choose other topics while we’re in bed. Now.” 

John lifted himself up enough to look down at his face. “Will you? Sometime, I mean. I want to know.”

“Why? You’re not that voyeuristic.”

John blinked at him, then smiled as if at a joke. Ducking his head down, John kissed his chin, lips and nose in quick, playful succession. “I mean it,” he added. “However much you’re willing to let me, I want to understand. Because then.” A kiss to his throat. “This.” Right shoulder. “Will work.” Collarbone. “So much.” Breastbone. “Better.” John lifted his head, his eyes. Crouched over Sherlock’s body, he was a sight to tremble at. “Never going to hurt you like that.”

Lying now between Sherlock’s legs, John continued. He stopped that damp licking without needing to be told. He used his cheek instead, his jaw, the pleasing scrape of the slightest stubble. What Sherlock had previously thought of as nuzzling suddenly became laughable. John stroked him with lips and nose and breath. His head was bent over Sherlock’s body and he welcomed Sherlock’s hands in his hair.

It felt like- He didn’t know. He had no idea what it felt like. Any of it.

With no basis for comparison, there was only John. John naked and calm and owning him. 

His face pressed against Sherlock’s stomach, pillowed. Breathing hot breath across his skin. Warm hands stroking over his shoulders. Steady, careful fingers tracing his ribs. Kisses ever lower, soft presses through his pants. Body bending, legs shifting. The return to higher territory, murmuring nonsense all the way. A quiet shush as Sherlock began to quiver beneath him.

“It’s all right,” John said. “Do you need me to stop?”

“No.” Something was wrong with his voice. It sounded thick, sob-like. 

“Too much?”

He nodded. He shook his head. He didn’t understand what was happening. 

John climbed up his body. Bent over him on all fours, not touching. He butted his head lightly against Sherlock’s, did it again to make him open his eyes. “Hey,” he said, using that ridiculous voice meant for people who were fragile. “It’s okay.”

“Don’t be an idiot, of course it is.” He returned his hands to John’s sides, proving it. 

John’s mouth broke out of its tight line and into a smile. “I’m allowed to be an idiot. Think it’s a requirement, actually, for being in love and all that.”

“Much more of a default state than-” What. “What did you say?” But they’d agreed. Monogamy. Emotional infidelity counted. 

John let out a long-suffering sigh. “I said I love you. And now we can go right back to not talking about it.”

For a long moment, Sherlock was silent. His mind was silent. Words were gone. 

And then he said, “You can talk about it. If you want to.” 

John’s eyebrows tried to rise but were kept in check. There was another moment of silence before John asked, “About what? You mean, that I love you? That I love you or that I’m in love with you, does it matter which? Do I get to talk about how much I love you as long as I use precise and accurate terms?” John wasn’t grinning. John was not grinning to the extent that it pained Sherlock’s face to watch. “If I want to talk about how I love you, that’s okay? It’s okay that I talk about loving you, then?”

“Shut up,” Sherlock tried to say, but it turned into some sort of helpless laughter.

“Make me,” John answered and kissed him. “Too bad, you can’t: I love you. You’re going to have to endure snogging and people being right when they think we’re a couple. It’ll be horrible. You’ll go mad. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

He hurt. Inside his chest. Some sort of strain. “John,” he said. 

“I love you,” John said. “Just so we’re clear on that. Idiot.”

Sherlock kissed him. 

John kissed him back. 

After, he rested his cheek on Sherlock’s shoulder. Breathing softly, steadily, as he approached sleep. Sprawled with his front against bony hips and his back bare to the cold. A naked man, relaxed to the point of seeming defencelessness. As if it didn’t matter that bargaining could no longer work, that conditions couldn’t hold. As if emotion would simply accomplish what it took careful leverage to arrange. There would be nothing to hide behind. What absurd, stupid bravery. He thought of John at his mercy and felt terrified. 

Mumbling something, John snuffled at the warmth of his neck. 

“John?”

“You can shove me off whenever,” John went on in a sleepy slur. “Gonna be unconscious now. Pet me, prod me, whatever, just don’t kill me in my sleep.”

His jaw rubbing lightly against John’s forehead, he said softly, “You can stay.”

“You’re tense, I’m heavy.” Half-hearted protest, more than half asleep. 

As if it were really so simple, as if John could be kept without being trapped, Sherlock wrapped his arms around John’s back. Warm and secure, he could almost believe it. 

John hummed, holding him in return, and slept. 

And stayed.

**Author's Note:**

> Explanation of Autons: they're a monster from the British television series Doctor Who. Simply put: living mannequins remote-controlled by hostile aliens. Creepy.


End file.
